Dying Earth genre
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Dying Earth genre is a kind of science fiction or fantasy which takes place at the end of Time, when the Sun slowly fades and the laws of the Universe themselves fail, with the science becoming indistinguishable from magic.
It was inspired by The Time Machine, a novel by H. G. Wells, at the end of which the time traveller travels into the far future. There he sees the last few living things on a dying Earth, before returning to his time to tell his story to friends.
The next book which can be said to belong to that genre is The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. Hodgson wrote a novel describing a time, millions of years in the future when the Sun had gone dark. The last few millions of the Human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark.
Next Clark Ashton Smith wrote a series of stories situated on the last continent of Earth, Zothique.
As Smith himself described it in a letter to L. Sprague de Camp, dated November 3, 1953:
"Zothique, vaguely suggested by Theosophic theories about past and future continents, is the last inhabited continent of earth. The continents of our present cycle have sunken, perhaps several times. Some have remained submerged; others have re-risen, partially, and re-arranged themselves.
.....
The science and machinery of our present civilization have long been forgotten, together with our present religions. But many gods are worshipped; and sorcery and demonism prevail again as in ancient days. Oars and sails alone are used by mariners. There are no fire-arms—only the bows, arrows, swords, javelins, etc. of antiquity."
Under influence of Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance wrote a series of fantasy books, called Dying Earth.
- The Dying Earth (collection of linked stories, 1950)
- The Eyes of the Overworld (collection of linked stories, 1966)
- Cugel's Saga (novel, 1983)
- Rhialto the Marvellous (collection of linked stories, 1984)
"The Dying Earth" is the origin of the name of the whole genre.
Other authors and books in the genre:
- Gene Wolfe - a series called The Book of the New Sun, chronicling the journey of a disgraced torturer named Severian to the highest position in the land. Severian, who has a perfect memory, tells the story in first person. The series takes place in the distant future, where the sun has dimmed considerably, and the world is slowly freezing.
- M. John Harrison- a series called Viriconium. Viriconium is the capitol city in which much of the action takes place. Viriconium lies in a dying Earth littered with the detritus of the millennia, partly drawn from Jack Vance's own Dying Earth series.
External links
- Notebooks (http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/dying-earth.html) A list of books belonging to Dying Earth genre.
- The Eldritch Dark (http://www.eldritchdark.com) - This website contains almost all of Clark Ashton Smith's written work, as well as a comprehensive selection of his art, biographies, a bibliography, a discussion board, readings, fiction tributes and more.
