Ports of Call

ISBN: 0-312-85801-9 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com

A typical Vance novel, filled with literate, sarcastic characters, motivated by greed, compassion, pride, lust, and search for adventure.

Reviewed by David on June 23, 1998

Genre: Science Fiction (Space Travel)

Synopsis: Myron, a young man eager for adventure, embarks on a space voyage as a captain of his wealthy aunt's yacht. Stranded after an acrimonious dispute, Myrons find a berth on a trading vessel, and participates in several understated adventures.

Full Review: Vance opens yet another novel in his monumental universe of Gaean Reach. The protagonist, a young man raised by stodgy parents, is earning for space travel, despite his family's attempts to shoehorn him into securities trading. His viewpoint is used to demonstrate once more the curious, exotic, and yet familiar motivations and customs of the human race, scattered across the galaxy.

The Gaean Reach is a huge, almost impossible to catalogue collection of planets, existing in a vaguely anarchic state and lightly policed by the IPCC. Each planet has different customs, technological development, justice system, etc. Vance uses the exotic locale to demonstrate that the same motivations: greed, lust, pettiness, search for beauty, academic one-upmanship, exist despite strange surroundings. Some of his musings are a bit like Gulliver's Travels, where the exaggerated customs of fantastic races are a sarcastic commentary on our own behavior, which seems so utterly rational and moral from the inside.

There are adventures in plenty, although not of the world-saving kind. Most of the good guys are motivated by self-preservation, desire to make a profit, flirt with a pretty girl, or collect exotic artifacts.

I would be remiss no to mention Vance's unique style. First, most of his characters sound alike—a literate, rather sarcastic tone, combining circumlocution and bluntness in a weird, yet smooth fashion. Vance uses rare words and unusual idioms to highlight the foreign customs, without inventing a new language. I have occasionally felt this way in England—all the sentences are grammatical, and the words are in the dictionary, and yet occasionally even common phrases sound very strange indeed to my American ear.

His conflicts are full of negotiations, his dialogues are full of acerbic insults, and the true horrors are understated.

Yet again, Vance has created an enjoyable book, full of his unique language and strange characters. It is not up to his best, and suffers from being an apparent introduction to a series, possibly a trilogy, about Myron and his friends. However, even a lesser Vance is a cause for celebration.

Universe: Gaean Reach

Overall: 6.5; Plot: 5; Characters: 6.5; Style: 7; World-building: 6.5; Originality: 5;

ISBN: 0-312-85801-9 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com