Читать книгу Songs of the Dying Earth - Gardner Dozois - Страница 22

ONE OF the very first science fiction books I bought as a kid was Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth, in its original paperback edition published by Hillman. (It cost me a quarter; it goes well over $100.00 on eBay these days.) I became an immediate fan, picking up Big Planet and all the other Vance titles—but then, as now, I had a special love for his tales of the last days of a dying Earth in a worn-out solar system. (So did a lot of other writers—not just the ones in this tribute volume, but dozens of writers over the years have emulated his style and borrowed some of his concepts, not as plagiarists, but as a loving tribute to his skills and his enormous influence throughout the field.)

When Carol and I decided, back in the 1970s, to enter a few Worldcon masquerades, the very first costume we chose to make was Chun the Unavoidable and his shill, Lith the Golden Witch. We won at Torcon, the 1973 Worldcon in Toronto…and now, thirty-six years later, it’s a pleasure to go back and offer my literary thanks to Chun and Lith, two of Jack’s more unforgettable characters.

—Mike Resnick