Mazirian the Magician - is an even more powerful sorcerer than Turjan, capable of holding six spells in his mind instead of four, questing after the same secret genetic recipes.

Seriously, it's good sword and sorcery in a SF backdrop, and if you're in the mood for something like that, you really can't go wrong with picking this classic up.

WorldCat contributing libraries report holding all four books in French, Spanish, and (in omnibus edition) Hebrew translations; and report holding The Dying Earth in five other languages: Finnish, German, Japanese, Polish, and Russian. Since his first published story, "The World-Thinker" (in Thrilling Wonder Stories) in 1945, Vance has written over sixty books. The first set of six stories is loosely tied together by recurring characters and a common geographical location. It's the world in its last breaths, with the knowledge that eventually the life will stop with the Sun. Permission to translate and distribute (only into Esperanto) was obtained informally direct from the author and, since his death in 2013, continues with ongoing permission from the author's estate.

Jack Vance's The Dying Earth is made of six short stories, somewhat interconnected, all set on future ancient Earth under the light of the dying Sun. g. through the "Eyes of the Overworld") or dangerous magic phenomena (such as the ship Cugel encounters in the deserts). And this is strange, strange magic, of the kind that would fascinate nerds like me for decades to come.Despite this, many of the situations they find themselves in are quite funny, in a dark and ironic sort of way.

Goodman Games have announced the publication of the setting using their Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game system, running a successful Kickstarter campaign for it. Although considering time machines and some of the technology in Clarke’s stories science rather than magic is a matter of interpretation.I've known for quite a while that George RR Martin thinks highly of Jack Vance and The Dying Earth and last year I had the opportunity to read his anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth, where a number of authors wrote short stories set in The Dying Earth. It felt like Vance realized he had to do something there since he had spent the whole series building up to it, but wasn’t really interested in that part. Embelyon: a realm removed from the Earth; it may be located in a different planet or another plane of existence entirely. I kept putting it off not out of reservations about it being dated or overrated, but like a collector who keeps a good bottle of wine for a special occasion or for a rainy day, when the blues gets to you and you start to wonder what's the point of all this reading.