Reflection on Jack Vance's _Planet of Adventure_

I'm working on an anthology of Jack Vance's pulp sci-fi advenure novellas, _Planet of Adventure_. I picked it up based on my love of a similar anthology called _Alastor_, which I read sometime in the early aughts.

What I admire most and hope to emulate is Vance's lyrical treatment of adventure stories. More specifically how beautifully he renders passages of action--because that's all it is, a series of action scenes. There is little (if any) interiority, but the sentences are brilliant and his clever shorthand ensures a brisk pace. If anyone could have translated Star Wars into a lyrical prose piece it would have been Vance.

The main weakness are the damsel-in-distress scenarios that play out again and again, and the messianic white man trope that so many critics took the film _Avatar_ to task for--a white man enters a foreign culture, masters it, shows the culture the error of its ways, and then dominates it. Vance wrote these novellas in the late 60's, so maybe we can forgive him more easily than we can James Cameron. But it's definitely worth pointing out lest you fall into the same writing trap.

Bottom line: Read Vance to learn how to render action and move your plot along. Be wary of his old-fashioned politics.

Thanks for dropping by

I gave up blogging a few years ago to concentrate on my new career as a librarian. But I thought it was time to return to the blogosphere to talk about work/family/writing balance. I'm taking a rather unconventional path to becoming a writer--if there is such a thing as a conventional path--and I often wish for insights from folks who raise children, work a full-time job, and manage to write novels. So I thought maybe I should share my own!

When my son Henry was born, I felt a renewed sense of purpose both in my daily work and in my writing. That's where the title comes from.