A slew of well-known SF and fantasy projects are in development through Startling Inc., including THE BELGARIAD, THE DYING EARTH and RED MARS

Thanks to detective work by the team at Westeros.org, it's been revealed that a surprisingly large number of classic SF and fantasy projects are in development via the Startling Inc. production company. The company is run by Vince Gerardis, a producer on Game of Thrones.

Some of the projects have been known about for a while and some seem to be stuck in development hell. Most seem to be speculative options, with the realistic prospect of making it to the screen being unclear. Still, it's worth breaking down the projects on the list:

Ringworld (MGM/Amazon): based on Larry Niven's classic 1970 novel about a huge, ring-shaped megastructure completely enclosing a star. Optioned in 2017, it is believed this project was moved onto the backburner some time ago and is not currently in active development.

Wild Cards (Universal Cable Pictures/Peacock): see more here.

Dark Winds (AMC): A detective series based on Tony Hillerman's novel The Dark Wind. Originally in the works at HBO, but presumably sold on to AMC since then.

The Ice Dragon (Warner Brothers Animation): an animated feature film based on George R.R. Martin's 1980 children's story. In development since 2018.

Eon (MWM, formerly Madison Wells Media): likely a project based on Greg Bear's classic 1985 "big dumb object" SF novel, Eon, the first volume in the Thistledown series.

A Song of Ice and Fire (The Works): speculated by the Westeros team to be a live experience or show based on the novels.

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Phoenix): a project based on Robert Heinlein's 1942 novella.

Sandkings (Netflix): see more here.

Passengers (Groundswell/Endeavour Content): likely a project based on Robert Silverberg's 1969 short story about alien beings who possess human bodies at will. Unrelated to the 2016 Chris Pratt/Jennifer Lawrence film.

Inconstant Moon (21 Laps/Picture Start): a project based on Larry Niven's 1971 short story.

Dry (Bruce Cohen Productions/MML): this is more ambiguous; possibly a project based on Neal and Jarrod Shusterman's 2018 novel about climate catastrophe.

Hawksbill Station (First Generation): a project based on Robert Silverberg's 1967 novel about a penal colony established in the distant past, from where prisoners cannot hope to escape.

Dayworld (Warner Brothers Television): a project based on the 1985 novel by Philip José Farmer where a chronically overcrowded Earth is managed by having only one-seventh of the population active at any time, spending the rest of the time in suspended animation.

Roadmarks (HBO): see more here.

The Postman (Playtone/Warner Brothers Television): a new take on David Brin's 1985 post-apocalyptic novel. The novel was previously adapted - mediocrely - as a film in 1997 with Kevin Costner.

More Than Human (Good Banana/HBO): an adaptation of Theodore Sturgeon's 1953 novel in which humans develop superpowers which they can blend together to create incredible effects.

OK (Anonymous Content): No idea on this one.

Arabian Nights (Tomorrow/ITV): Presumably another take on the classic mythological story cycle originally known as One Thousand and One Nights.

Rose Hill (Leeding Media): There's several possibilities here, including Julie Garwood's Claybornes of Rose Hill novel series (previously filmed in 1997 as Rose Hill) and Pamela Grandstaff's Rose Hill Mysteries series.

PLAY (Dimitri Vegas): No idea on this one.

Weetzie Bat (Stampede/UCP): A film based on the Dangerous Angels novel series by Francesca Lia Block. Ana Taylor-Joy, Nick Robinson, Theodore Pellerin and Keiynan Lonsdale were attached to star and Justin Kelly to direct, but there has been no word on the project since 2018. It might be that this is a new take on the same idea (since Stampede and/or UCP do not appear to have been involved in the 2018 project).

Clean (Anonymous): A surprisingly popular novel title, making it hard to pin down what it's based on.

Sleepless (Stampede): Most likely, a project based on Nancy Kress's Sleepless trilogy (starting with Beggars in Spain) about a new generation of humans genetically-engineered not to need sleep, who rapidly become far more intelligent and capable than "sleepy" humans and threaten to supplant them.

Up the Line (Village Roadshow): a project based on Robert Silverberg's 1969 time travel novel.

The Mars Trilogy (Fox): a project based on Kim Stanley Robinson's multi-award winning Mars Trilogy of novels (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars); previously in development at Spike Television with J. Michael Straczynski, where it was dropped after being a poor fit for the network. 

The Belgariad (City Hill): a project based on David and Leigh Eddings' five-volume epic fantasy saga (credited to David alone, but in later life he confirmed his wife's full involvement in the writing process). As a major epic fantasy work of the 1980s, it's been developed for adaptation several times but never quite made it into active development. Its prospects have probably not been helped by the recent revelation that the authors were child abusers who did jail time in the 1970s for beating and imprisoning their foster children.

Billion Dollar Boy (Phoenix): a project based on the 1997 novel by Charles Sheffield, in which a spoiled rich kid from a future Earth is abandoned on a remote space station and has to work hard to survive.

The Dying Earth (A24): a project based on the four-volume science fantasy series by Jack Vance. Hugely influential and important, The Dying Earth directly inspired Dungeons & Dragons (which uses the same magic system) and the entire "Dying Earth" subgenre of science fantasy.

Flood/Ark (Anonymous/Epix): a project based on the high-concept SF duology of the same name by British SF author Stephen Baxter, about the Earth becoming uninhabitable when a previously-unknown body of water in Earth's mantle is released into the oceans, causing catastrophic global flooding and forcing humanity to adapt or flee the planet altogether.

Montmartre (Stampede): No idea on this one, except possibly a project related to Picasso.

RPM (Infinito): No idea on this one either.

It's likely only a small number of these will ever make it to the screen, and it'll be interesting to see which ones.

A History of Epic Fantasy - Part 3

Seventeen years passed between the publication of The Hobbit and its much larger and longer sequel, The Lord of the Rings. However, this period was not without significant works of fantasy being published.

One of the more interesting fantasy works to emerge in the immediate post-Hobbit era was a series of short stories by the American author Fritz Leiber. Leiber, in collaboration with his friend Harry Otto Fischer, had created two characters loosely based on themselves, but also intended to subvert expectations of what fantasy characters could be. These characters were, of course, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The duo appeared in thirty-six short stories and a full-length novel, published between 1939 and 1988. Initially they appeared in magazines such as Unknown and Fantastic, but in 1968 the stories began to be packaged in omnibus editions, at which point their sales began to take off impressively.

Leiber is, lamentably, not a household name but his influence was huge. Both Gary Gygax (the creator of Dungeons and Dragons) and Terry Pratchett read his stories whilst younger and found them hugely influential. Gygax even later licensed Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser's world of Newhon as an official D&D campaign world, whilst Pratchett's first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, is as much an affectionate satire of Leiber specifically as it is of fantasy as a whole. In particular, before taking it in its own direction in later books, the city of Ankh-Morpork in the earlier novels can be seen as a direct riff on Lankhmar, the most notable settlement of Newhon. Indeed, Lankhmar can be seen as perhaps the first archetypal fantasy city, a place of narrow alleys, raucous inns and rooftop chases.

There was another author engaged in a spot of worldbuilding and subcreation closer to home as well. In 1938 C.S. Lewis published Out of the Silent Planet, a science fiction novel borne out of a conversation with his close friend, J.R.R. Tolkien. The two authors had agreed to write a series of complementary stories about space travel and time travel; Tolkien's story, The Lost Road (about the downfall of Numenor), was never completed as he prioritised work on The Lord of the Rings, but he did make use of the material he created for it for backstory to the new novel. Lewis not only finished his book but published two sequels (Perelandra and That Hideous Strength), creating the Space Trilogy. When looking for a new writing project, Lewis recalled an experience in 1939, at the outset of the Second World War, when his family home had to host three girls sent out of London in fear of bombing. Lewis used this as the seed to write a fantasy series set in a fictional world called Narnia.

The Chronicles of Narnia spanned seven fairly short novels, published between 1949 and 1956. The land of Narnia was described in some detail and Lewis used the fantastical setting to explore Christian themes of sacrifice and redemption. The series was critically acclaimed upon release, bringing Lewis fame and fortune that (for a time) eclipsed that of his friend Tolkien. However, Tolkien himself was cool on the series, in part because he couldn't help the suspicion that Lewis had modelled Narnia on Middle-earth and been inspired by the still-gestating Lord of the Rings, which he had been reading to his writing friends as work progressed (in particular, he was irritated by Lewis using the name "Numinor", despite it apparently being used as an affectionate nod at Tolkien).

As well as its worldbuilding and religious themes, Narnia was notable for its non-sequential, non-linear storytelling. Each book was self-contained, but jumped around in time and space, with some of the later books being prequels and interquels and the primary cast of characters changing with each novel, both ideas used in later fantasy series to keep things fresh for the author.

The other major key work of this period was written by another English author and illustrator: Mervyn Peake. In 1946 he published Titus Groan, a novel about the inhabitants of a colossal, crumbling castle called Gormenghast. The novel was dense and complex, but featured at its core a villainous point-of-view character called Steerpike, who was determined to bring down the ruling Groan family and take power himself. The story was too big for one volume and Peake continued the story in Gormenghast (1950), which concluded Steerpike's story rather definitively. Peake planned to continue the series, at one point considering no less than ten volumes set in the same world. He started writing a third book, Titus Alone, and made plans for two more (tentatively entitled Titus Awake and Gormenghast Revisited), but died at the tragically early age of 57. Titus Alone was published in 1959, but in rather butchered form. A proper edition was released in 1970, whilst Peake's widow wrote her own version of Titus Awakes that was eventually published in 2011.

The Gormenghast Trilogy is best-known for its setting, an ancient edifice of crumbling stone whose physical disrepair matches the declining state of the family that rules it. It is certainly not an epic fantasy, being more reminiscent of Gothic drama. However, the idea of impossible, vast castles - the Big Dumb Objects of epic fantasy - would live on in later works: the Hayholt of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and Winterfell and Harrenhal (among others) in A Song of Ice and Fire owe some of their inspiration to Peake's work.

Back in the United States another author decided to start writing a series of short stories while at sea as part of the Merchant Marine. His name was Jack Vance, and starting in the early 1940s he began penning stories set in an unimaginably distant future when the Earth is dying and the sun is about to go out. Despite the alleged SF backdrop, Vance populated his far future setting with rogues, thieves and wizards. Although not epic fantasy as such - The Dying Earth (1950) and its three sequels instead creating a subgenre of their own - many of the touchstones of epic fantasy can be found in this series. There's the vigorously scientific approach to magic, giving the fantastic a set of reliable rules and limitations. These proved so strong that Gary Gygax later lifted them wholesale for his Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game. There was also the use of post-apocalyptic Earth as the setting for the story. Many later epic fantasies, from Shannara to The Wheel of Time to the recent Shattered Sea, would do the same thing. There's also the impact Vance had on later writers, most notably Gygax and Pratchett but also George R.R. Martin (Vance is Martin's favourite author). In 1983 Vance himself penned a more traditional epic fantasy, The Lyonesse Trilogy, one of the all-time finest works of the genre.

Throughout all of this time J.R.R. Tolkein had been busy at home in Oxford, writing, re-writing, editing and re-editing The Lord of the Rings. The impact it would have when finally published is something the author, and the SFF world, was not expecting.

RIP Jack Vance

A giant of the genre has fallen. Jack Vance has died at the age of 96.

It is impossible to overstate Vance's contribution to the fields of both science fiction and fantasy. His impact is comparable to J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard, although in Vance's case it was at a remove: Vance was a huge influence and inspiration to writers such as George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Gary Gygax, Neil Gaiman, Tad Williams and many more.

Vance (real name: John Holbrook Vance; Jack was his pen-name) was born  in California in 1916 and was raised in San Francisco and nearby Oakley. He studied engineering, physics, journalism and English at the University of California, Berkley. Vance was working an electrician at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, returning to the mainland just a month before the Japanese attack. Vance initially failed to qualify for military service due to weak eyesight. He memorised an eye chart to get into the Merchant Marine and worked on cargo ships crossing the Pacific.

"The mark of good writing, in my opinion,is that the reader is not aware that the story has been written; as he reads, the ideas and images flow into his mind as if he were living them. The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence." - Jack Vance, This is Me, Jack Vance!

Vance's interest in science fiction and fantasy began at a young age; early attempts to write SF for his English classes drew disdain from the teachers. It was during free time serving in the Merchant Marine that Vance conceived of his most famous creation: a time in the dim and distant future when the sun is dying and about to go out, and the world has become populated by fantastical creatures and astonishing technology coexisting in the ruins of ancient cities. He wrote a series of linked short stories in this setting which was - eventually - published as The Dying Earth in 1950. The book was hugely influential on a generation of readers, including George R.R. Martin (who cites Vance as his favourite author and one of his primary influences) and Gary Gygax, who 'borrowed' both Vance's magic system and several of his spell names for the Dungeons and Dragons game Gygax published in 1974. Vance followed up The Dying Earth with a duology of novels following the adventures of the scoundrel and reprobate Cugel the Clever, The Eyes of the Overworld (1966) and Cugel's Saga (1983), before rounding off the series with a concluding set of linked short stories under the title Rhialto the Marvellous (1984).

"What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously."I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue." - The Dying Earth (1950)

In 1946 Vance met and married Norma Ingold (who sadly passed away in 2008). Norma helped Vance in his writing, typing up his longhand drafts into submittable manuscripts. In the late 1940s he began making money by selling short stories and writing scripts for the Captain Video TV series. Though writing did not become his sole occupation until the 1970s, Vance was able to fund frequent overseas trips with his income. He and his wife would spend months at a time living in places like Ireland, Kashmir and South Africa, with Vance pounding out more stories and novels on a keyboard whilst soaking up the local culture. Vance became close friends with several other SFF authors of the period, spending several months living near Frank Herbert on an extended trip to Mexico. Vance's sight began failing him in the 1980s after an operation to treat glaucoma went wrong, but he continued to write with the help of Norma and computer voice-recognition software.

Astonishingly, despite being completely blind when he wrote most of it, Vance was still able to write one of the greatest works of fantasy literature in the 1980s, the Lyonesse Trilogy. Set in a fictional archipelago in the Bay of Biscay that would later sink, this trilogy sees people (including humans, fairies and the fearsome Ska) and cultures clashing for control of the islands and their destiny. Vance's mastery of language was at its peak in this trilogy, consisting of Suldrun's Garden (1983), The Green Pearl (1986) and Madouc (1989). In its omnibus edition, this may be the finest one-volume work of fantasy of the 20th Century, matched only by The Book of the  New Sun (which itself can be seen as a literary rewrite of The Dying Earth), The Lord of the Rings and the Gormenghast omnibus.

"I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since whatever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapors rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter." - The Green Pearl (1986)

Vance also wrote many works of SF, including the Ports of Call duology, the Cadwal Chronicles trilogy, the Gaean Reach series and, most famously, the five-volume Demon Princes series (often cited, alongside Dying Earth and Lyonesse, as one of Vance's three masterpiece series). He also wrote the one-volume planetary adventure, Big Planet (1957), set on a planet considerably larger than Earth and again noted by George R.R. Martin as an inspiration for A Song of Ice and Fire (Martin spent some time planning to make Westeros's planet far larger than Earth as well, but seems to have backed off a bit from this idea).

Christopher Priest has penned a memorial to Jack Vance here. George R.R. Martin muses on Vance and his influence here. The Guardian is also collating various tributes to Vance here. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has a more detailed account of Vance's career here.

Jack Vance died on 26 May 2013 at the age of 96.

Wertzone Classics: Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance

"These are tales of the 21st Aeon, when the Earth is old and the Sun is about to go out."

From one classic of the genre to another. Jack Vance's Dying Earth series is set in the distant, remote future when technology and magic have become entwined. His stories are tales of humour, tragedy and whimsy set at the end of human history, and are among the most distinctive tales in fantasy fiction.

Tales of the Dying Earth collects all four of the principal Dying Earth books: The Dying Earth (1950), The Eyes of the Overworld (1964), Cugel's Saga (1983) and Rhialto the Marvellous (1984). Written over a period of thirty-four years, these books (themselves collections of short stories or episodes) are nevertheless fairly cohesive in style and readability. That said, The Dying Earth is somewhat more serious than the latter three books, and the central two novels are sometimes considered to form a duology, as they relate the misadventures of a scoundrel and thief named Cugel the Clever, whilst the other two books feature different characters and situations.

The Dying Earth itself is a collection of six short stories, but these are connected by an interesting writing device. Each story focuses on a central character who meets the central figure of the subsequent story in his own adventure, so the narrative is passed almost like a baton to the next character. So the book opens with Turjan, a wizard of some power, encountering the artificial construct T'sais. In the next story he is imprisoned by the wizard Mazirian, who is defeated in turn by T'sain, T'sais' brother. Then the narrative switches to T'sais' adventures. And so on. It's an interesting device for a short story collection and the stories are bound closely together because of it. However, The Dying Earth's success is in its atmospheric depiction of a far-future, dying world under a shrunken red sun. The stories themselves are interesting, but not as compelling as the later books.

The Eyes of the Overworld introduces Cugel the Clever, a rogue and scoundrel always on the look-out for a profit. He is manipulated by a dubious rival, Fianosther, into attempting to rob the manse of Iucounu the Laughing Magician, who discovers this attempt and is not impressed. He offers Cugel a choice between being entombed 45 miles below the Earth's surface, or journeying to remote lands to seek a mystical 'eye of the overworld'. Cugel is thus exiled to the far ends of the world to seek the artifact and has to return home, having numerous adventures along the way. It's Cugel's constant misfortune, at times reaching ridiculous and farcical levels, that makes this part of the story both hilarious and breathlessly enjoyable. By this volume Vance's skills as a writer have grown tremendously and his command of the English language is a joy to behold, with its flowery, polite terminology used to disguise feelings of hatred and jealousy like a particularly demented take on medieval court language. At length, Cugel apparently succeeds in his mission and gains the upper hand...until misfortune once again befalls him and he is left on a cliffhanger.

Nineteen years later (a break in a series that would be unthinkable today), Vance resumed the story in Cugel's Saga. Once again banished to the ends of the Earth, Cugel once again sets out for home, but this time travels by a different route. Essentially a second picaresque travelogue, the story is similar in structure to the preceding volume but is possibly even better, with more polished writing and Cugel's ambiguous appeal remaining intact. If anything, this book is even more hilarious than the second, although some may feel the relatively happy ending is not entirely in keeping with Cugel's typical fortunes.

The final book, Rhialto the Marvellous, is also sadly the weakest. It is much more overtly fantastical than the first three, incorporating voyages through space, but the focus on less interesting protagonists than Cugel means it feels like an afterthought. That's not to say the stories here are unenjoyable, merely that they are of a different nature than Cugel's and less distinctive because of it.

Jack Vance is one of SF&F's most distinctive authors, with a formidable grasp of language and a keen wit making him one of the genre's most interesting writers. The Dying Earth stories are rightly regarded as genre classics, inspiring works such as Gene Wolfe's astonishing Book of the New Sun and being cited as a major influence on numerous writers. The Dying Earth and Rhialto the Marvellous have aged somewhat, but the central Cugel stories are as fresh, comical and as fun to read now as they were when they were first published.

Tales of the Dying Earth (*****) is published in the UK by Gollancz as part of their Fantasy Masterworks range and by Orb Books in the USA. A new Dying Earth book, Songs of the Dying Earth, containing short stories by writers such as Tad Williams, Robert Silverberg and Neil Gaiman, edited by Gardner Dozois and George RR Martin, and authorised by Jack Vance, will be published early next year by Subterranean Press and HarperCollins Voyager.