Worlds of Paul Jessup

Finished this last night.  Had to keep checking to see when it was published. Why?  because although there are a scant few parts I would consider creaky and old (mostly to do with the first few narratives), this work is still very fresh, still very original.  In a way, it’s a collection of short stories.  But in a way it’s not- it’s more like a collection of narratives, and the narratives contain an Ur-Story between the lines (that of the history of the world as it is).

Most of these stories could easily be republished today.  Easily.  Prose-wise, yes, there are moments of poetry, but most of the prose is kind of creaky.  But that’s excusable due to the subject matter, the narratives, and the concepts.  Most stories wander, they are intellectual character studies.  Most don’t cling strictly to plot, but instead tread where they feel necessary, and leave big gaping holes in the narrative that the reader has to fill in his own.

Sadly, the sfnal textual objects (you know- words created to describe the unknown) are clunky and feel mouthful.  Of course, it’s hard not to compare his made up words and places to Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique (and my, CAS has a way with words, with creating of names of places, they roll of the tongue and light the air), and in this case they fall.  They are as bad as some of the names/places in Star Wars (What I like to call Dookuisms).

But other than that- this book still holds up.  As a mosiac narrative.  As a series of character and world studies.  I’m going to read the next few books over the next few days- and I’m excited.  I haven’t read those in years, and I hope they hold up just as well.

You know, I might do an overview of the dying earth genre books I’ve read a little later (Zothique stories, the Viriconium books, the Dying Earth Books and Gene Wolfe’s Shadow and Claw, etc books) and compare and contrast what works in each of them.