The Moon Moth and Other Stories (42 page)
Read The Moon Moth and Other Stories Online
Authors: Jack Vance
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Short Stories, #General
Gold and Iron (Slaves of the Klau/Planet of the Damned)
(1958)
Space Opera
(1965)
The Blue World
(1966)
Emphyrio
(1969)
The Dogtown Tourist Agency (aka Galactic Effectuator)
(1980)
Collections
The World-Thinker and Other Stories
The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (aka Gadget Stories)
Son of the Tree and Other Stories
Golden Girl and Other Stories
The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories
The Dragon Masters and Other
The Moon Moth and Other Stories
Autobiography
This is Me, Jack Vance
(2009)
Jack Vance (1916 – )
Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining, engineering and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice. He started contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the mid 1940s and published his first book,
The Dying Earth
, in 1950. Among his many books are
The Dragon Masters
, for which he won his first Hugo Award,
Big Planet, The Anome
, and the Lyonesse sequence. He has won the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, amongst others, and in 1997 was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Jack Vance 1975
All rights reserved.
The right of Jack Vance to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10993 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
*
Kiv
: five banks of resilient metal strips, fourteen to the bank, played by touching, twisting, twanging.
*
Stimic
: three flute-like tubes equipped with plungers. Thumb and forefinger squeeze a bag to force air across the mouth-pieces; the second, third and fourth little fingers manipulate the slide. The
stimic
is an instrument well-adapted to the sentiments of cool withdrawal, or even disapproval.
*
Krodatch
: a small square sound-box strung with resined gut. The musician scratches the strings with his fingernail, or strokes them with his fingertips, to produce a variety of quietly formal sounds. The
krodatch
is also used as an instrument of insult.
*
Skaranyi
: a miniature bag-pipe, the sac squeezed between thumb and palm, the four fingers controlling the stops along four tubes.
*
Gomapard
: one of the few electric instruments used on Sirene. An oscillator produces an oboe-like tone which is modulated, choked, vibrated, raised and lowered in pitch by four keys.
**
Double-kamanthil
: an instrument similar to the
ganga
, except the tones are produced by twisting and inclining a disk of resined leather against one or more of the forty-six strings.
*
In Drewe’s book
Sulwen’s Planet
he remarked: “Color is color and shape is shape; it would seem incorrect to speak of
human
shape and
human
color, and
Wasp
shape and
Wasp
color; but somehow, by some means, the distinction exists. Call me a mystic if you like…”
*
Utilis: a world cognate to Palaeocene Earth, where, by Alan Robertson’s decree, all the industries, institutions, warehouses, tanks, dumps and commercial offices of old Earth were now located. The name ‘Utilis’, so it had been remarked, accurately captured the flavor of Alan Robertson’s pedantic, quaint and idealistic personality.
**
Alan Robertson had proposed another specialized world, to be known as ‘Tutelar’, where the children of all the settled worlds should receive their education in a vast array of pedagogical facilities. To his hurt surprise, he encountered a storm of wrathful opposition from parents. His scheme was termed mechanistic, vast, dehumanizing, repulsive. What better world for schooling than old Earth itself? Here was the source of all tradition; let Earth become ‘Tutelar’! So insisted the parents and Alan Robertson had no choice but to agree.
Table of Contents