Today, we tackle a fantasy tale:
In the 1930s, Clark Ashton Smith wrote his Zothique tales--stories set in the far future. This dying Earth is lit by a dim, red sun and the world is infested with magic and monsters. They are fantastic stories full of vivid imagery, ornate prose and sardonic humor.
In the 1950s, Jack Vance began writing his version of a Dying Earth. In a 1981 interview, he freely admitted Smith's influence. Though Vance (like Smith, an extraordinary writer) gave his Dying Earth its own feel, it was very similar to Zothique in many ways. Dim, red sun, magic and monsters, ornate prose, vivid imagery and sardonic humor.
One of Vance's best characters lived in his Dying Earth setting. Cugel the Clever was a thief and con artist who wasn't necessarily as clever as he thought he was. His plans to make a less-than-honest living pretty nearly always went awry or led to unplanned consequences.
In 1974, Vance returned to Cugel after the thief had disappeared into Fiction Limbo for some years. "The Seventeen Virgins." first appeared in the October 1974 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine.
It takes a while for the virgins to come into the picture. Cugel is fleeing one location and comes across a village whose people and customs are unknown to him. He makes some money running a dishonest card game and a fake fortune teller scam.
It's here the titular virgins appear. Wanting to move on, he uses a less-than-ethical plan to get a job as the night guard on a caravan transporting the virgins to another city for a religious ceremony. But Cugel is the only night guard, which means he's free to secretly visit some of the virgins. Not all of them qualify for their roles when the caravan reaches its destination.
This city bases its culture on altruism and redemption, so Cugel is given an opportnity to redeem himself. This, unfortunately, involves giving Cugel the task of talking to a captured demon and giving it a chance to give up evil. This is not likely to end well.
Like all the Cugel stories, this one is just plain fun to read. Like Clark Ashton Smith, Vance had a love for obscure words and a talent for picking just the right words to make any particular sentence a delight to read.
This story isn't quite as old as most of the prose fiction I discuss on this blog, but what the heck. It's definitely worth reading. You can find it online HERE.
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