Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One by Jack Vance

orbit.”
    “Suppose the Han priests come through the portal and want it moved again?”
    “The portal no longer exists. It was held open by Han; when Han dissolved, the portal closed…Is that the total of your desires?”
    Kelly’s mind raced, became a turmoil. This was his chance. Wealth, longevity, power, knowledge…Somehow thoughts would not form themselves—and there were curses attached to unnatural gifts—
    “I’d like to get back to Bucktown safely…”
    Kellyfound himself in the glare of the outer world. He stood on the hill above Bucktown, and he breathed the salt air of the marshes. Above hung a hot white sun—Magra Taratempos.
    He became aware of an object clenched in his hand. It was thejewel he had torn out of Han’s neck. There were two others in his pocket.
    Across the city he saw the light-blue and stainless-steel box of the station. What should he tell Herli and Mapes? Would they believe the truth? He looked at the three jewels. Two he could sell for a fortune on Earth. But one shone brilliantly in the bright sunlight and that was for Lynette Mason’s tan and graceful neck.
     

Afterword to “The Temple of Han”
     
    Talking shop has never appealed much to me, and I have spent most of my career trying to avoid it…
    Early in my career I established a set of rather rigid rules as to how fiction should be written, but I find these rules difficult to formalize, or explain, or put into some sort of pattern which might instruct someone else. If I adhere to any fundamental axiom or principle in my writing, perhaps it is my belief that the function of fiction is essentially to amuse or entertain the reader. The mark of good writing, in my opinion, is that the reader is not aware that the story has been written; as he reads, the ideas and images flow into his mind as if he were living them. The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence.
    In order to achieve this, the writer must put no obstacles in the reader’s way. Therefore I try avoid words that he must puzzle over, or that he cannot gloss from context; and when I make up names, I shun the use of diacritical marks that he must sound out, thus halting the flow; and in general, I try to keep the sentences metrically pleasing, so that they do not obtrude upon the reader’s mind. The sentences must swing…
    Before my first sale: “The World-Thinker”…I wrote an epic novel in the style of E.E. Smith’s cosmic chronicles. My own epic was rejected everywhere. I finally broke it into pieces and salvaged a few episodes for short stories. I think that “The Temple of Han” (originally “The God and Temple Robber”) was one of these altered episodes.
     
    —Jack Vance

The Masquerade on Dicantropus

 
    Two puzzles dominated the life of Jim Root. The first, the pyramid out in the desert, tickled and prodded his curiosity, while the second, the problem of getting along with his wife, kept him keyed to a high pitch of anxiety and apprehension. At the moment the problem had crowded the mystery of the pyramid into a lost alley of his brain.
    Eyeing his wife uneasily, Root decided that she was in for another of her fits. The symptoms were familiar—a jerking over of the pages of an old magazine, her tense back and bolt-upright posture, her pointed silence, the compression at the corners of her mouth.
    With no preliminary motion she threw the magazine across the room, jumped to her feet. She walked to the doorway, stood looking out across the plain, fingers tapping on the sill. Root heard her voice, low, as if not meant for him to hear.
    “Another day of this and I’ll lose what little’s left of my mind.”
    Root approached warily. If he could be compared to a Labrador retriever, then his wife was a black panther—a woman tall and well-covered with sumptuous flesh. She had black flowing hair and black flashing eyes. She lacquered her fingernails and wore black lounge pajamas even on desiccated