{"id":1678,"date":"2012-10-21T20:41:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T00:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=1678"},"modified":"2012-10-21T20:41:58","modified_gmt":"2012-10-22T00:41:58","slug":"the-eyes-of-the-overworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/the-eyes-of-the-overworld\/","title":{"rendered":"The Eyes of the Overworld"},"content":{"rendered":"

{4\/5} “I dimly recall that I inhabit a sty and devour the coarsest of food — but the subjective reality is that I inhabit a glorious palace and dine on splendid viands among the princes and princesses who are my peers. It is explained thus: the demon Underherd looked from the sub-world to this one; we look from this to the Overworld, which is the quintessence of human hope, visionary longing, and beatific dream. We who inhabit this world — how can we think of ourselves as other than splendid lords? This is how we are.”<\/p>\n

Cugel gets some advice that he could steal some valuables from Iucounu the Laughing Magician. He fails, and Iucounu will apply the Charm of Forlorn Encystment unless Cugel performs a task for him. Iucounu has one magic cusp — Cugel is to obtain another. A pair of cusps fit over your eyes will allow you to see into the Overworld. Obtaining the cusp might not be the hardest part of the quest — then he has to get back home.<\/p>\n

The Eyes of the Overworld<\/strong> by Jack Vance was published in 1966. This book is set in the same world as\u00a0The Dying Earth<\/strong><\/a>. The earlier book is a collection of short stories, whereas this is a novel.<\/p>\n

Like the characters in The Dying Earth<\/strong>, Cugel is on a quest — this one just takes longer. He encounters many strange beings on his journey. He also frequently vows revenge on Iucounu, who has forced him on this unpleasant journey.<\/p>\n

The humour comes from the use of language. Here’s what a footman says to Cugel: “Your manner, the tilt of your head, the swing of your eyes from side to side denotes recklessness and unpredictability. I trust you will hold this quality in abeyance, if indeed it exists.” Here’s what a member of the rat-folk says after kidnapping Cugel: “There is no reason why, in an essentially inconvenient relationship, we should not adopt an attitude of camaraderie.”<\/p>\n

Although Cugel calls himself “Cugel the Clever” I found some of the solutions to problems to be not quite as clever as the ones in The Dying Earth<\/strong>. Cugel is unfailingly pleasant in manner but he treats people he doesn’t care about (which is pretty much everyone) as objects to be discarded when he feels like.<\/p>\n

I was under the impression that the word “grue” was made up by the makers of the text adventure game Zork<\/strong>, but Vance uses it here — it’s some kind of monster you don’t want to encounter in a dark place.<\/p>\n

There are a couple more books in the series, but I think I’ll move on to something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{4\/5} “I dimly recall that I inhabit a sty and devour the coarsest of food — but the subjective reality is that I inhabit a glorious palace and dine on splendid viands among the princes and princesses who are my peers. It is explained thus: the demon Underherd looked from the sub-world to this one; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,9,28,5],"class_list":["post-1678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-fantasy","tag-novels","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1678"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1706,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1678\/revisions\/1706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}