The Compleat Dying Earth. Science Fiction Book Club, 1999. Illustrated by Gerald Brom. Hardcover, 741 pp.
Tales of the Dying Earth. Fantasy Masterworks. Cover art: Geoff Taylor (see Geoff Taylor's home page). Paperback.
The Dying Earth saga inspired writers like Michael Moorcock and Gene Wolfe, who freely acknowledges his debt to Vance in his own Book of the New Sun. Here, in one volume, is Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author Jack Vance's classic Dying Earth saga comprisingThe Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous. Travel to a far distant future, when the sun bleeds red in a dark sky, where magic and science is one, and the Earth has but a few short decades to live...
The series
The stories of the Dying Earth series are set in the distant future, at a point when the sun is almost exhausted and magic has reasserted itself as a dominant force. The various civilizations of Earth have collapsed for the most part into decadence. The Earth is mostly barren and cold, and has become infested with various predatory monsters (possibly created by a magician in a former age).
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The Moon has disappeared and the Sun is in danger of burning out at any time. A certain fatalism characterizes many of the inhabitants as a consequence.
The series shows the influence of the picaresque tale, applied to a science fiction/fantasy setting.
#1 · 1950The Dying Earth 
#2 · 1966The Eyes of the Overworld 
#3 · 1983Cugel's Saga 
#4 · 1984Rhialto the Marvellous 
1974A Quest for Simbilis 
1979Morreion 
1979The Seventeen Virgins 
1979The Bagful of Dreams 
1999Tales of the Dying Earth 
2005The Laughing Magician: The Adventures of Cugel 
2009Songs of the Dying Earth 
2013The Guiding Nose of Ulfänt Banderoz Be the first reviewer
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