Cugel's Saga

Cugel's Saga is a picaresque fantasy novel by American writer Jack Vance, published by Timescape in 1983, the third book in the Dying Earth series, the first volume of which appeared in 1950. The narrative of "Cugel's Saga" continues from the point at which it left off at the end of "The Eyes of the Overworld" (1966).
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database calls "Cugel's Saga" "[t]wice as large and less episodic than "Eyes of the Overworld"", and catalogs it as a novel rather than a fix-up, but also qualifies that label. "This is marketed as a novel, but there is a table of contents, and some of the parts were previously published (although none are acknowledged thus)."
Plot summary.
The story begins on Shanglestone Strand, a desolate beach far to the north of Almery, where Cugel had been dumped at the end of "The Eyes of the Overworld" by a winged demon after he mispronounced the spell intended to inflict the same fate on his nemesis, Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Avoiding the village of Smolod, the scene of his first adventure in "The Eyes of the Overworld" and where "memories are long", Cugel heads down Shanglestone Strand and arrives at Flutic, a manse owned by the avaricious Master Twango, whose business is salvaging the scales of an Overworld entity named Sadlark from a miry pit in his back garden. The scales are sold to the firm of Soldinck and Mercantides, who trans-ship them to a customer in Almery. Taking employment at Flutic, through sheer luck Cugel obtains the Pectoral Skybreak Spatterlight, the most valuable of all the scales, as it constitutes Sadlark's central node of force, or "protonastic centrum". The Skybreak Spatterlight, which absorbs every living creature with which it comes into contact, imprisoning them in limbo, is central to the plot of the novel since it is coveted by none other than Iucounu, the mysterious final customer for the scales, who believes himself to be Sadlark's avatar and is trying to reconstruct the Overworld entity scale by scale. (Chapter I.1)
After defrauding Twango of a substantial sum, only to be double-crossed by Yelleg and Malser, Twango's "scale divers", Cugel absconds from Flutic, still in possession of the Skybreak Spatterlight. At the nearby port of Saskervoy he takes employment as a lowly worminger (a crew member responsible for the maintenance of huge marine worms) aboard the worm-propelled "Galante", a merchant ship owned by Soldinck and Mercantides, hoping to reach Almery by sea. On the island of Lausicaa, where he is to be replaced by a more competent worminger and thus remain stranded, Cugel hijacks the "Galante", kidnapping Soldinck's wife and three comely daughters. Madame Soldinck, to whom Cugel naively entrusts the duties of night helmsman, outwits her captor by turning the ship in the opposite direction every night while Cugel is asleep after dallying with her daughters. To evade retribution at the hands of Master Soldinck, who is pursuing the "Galante" in a lubberly cog, Cugel runs the ship aground on the Tustvold mud flats and wades ashore. (Chapters I.2, II.1, II.2, II.3)
At the nearby village of Tustvold he falls in with a quarryman and antiquarian named Nisbet, whose trade is the construction of columns atop which the idle husbands of the industrious village women bask in the rays of the dying sun. The height of the columns is a status symbol and so the village women vie with each other to have Nisbet erect taller and taller columns for their husbands. With the aid of Nisbet's gravity-repellent boot dressing, Cugel comes up with a scheme whereby he surreptitiously removes the bottom segments of every column in order to resell them to the women. The ruse is discovered and he flees the village before the women can lynch him. (Chapter III.1)
Travelling onward, in the countryside between Tustvold and Port Perdusz, Cugel narrowly avoids a sticky end at the manse of Faucelme, a magician who recognises the Skybreak Spatterlight and, when Cugel refuses to part with it, attempts various underhand ways of doing away with its present owner. Arriving at Port Perdusz, Cugel discovers that sea passage to Almery is impossible. Using Nisbet's magical boot dressing to render it immune to gravity, Cugel steals a ship, the "Avventura", and joins a caravan led by Varmous. The caravan, towing the "Avventura" and its "premium" passengers through the air, arrives, after various adventures, in Kaspara Vitatus, the City of Monuments, where the vessel's original owner, Captain Wiskich, and his crew finally catch up with it. (Chapters III.2, IV.1, IV.2)
Cugel flees across a barren waste known as the Pale Rugates and finally comes to the town of Gundar, the site of the last remaining Solar Emosynaries, who stimulate the combustion of the dying sun by projecting the heat of a fire at the solar orb through a contraption made of lenses. Cugel manages to gain employment as a night watchman guarding a caravan conveying seventeen virgins south to the temple city of Lumarth. At Lumarth, however, the College of Thurists discover that only two of the seventeen maidens are still virgins. Obliged to expiate his crime, Cugel is sent down into the depths of the temple of the demon Phampoun. Conversing with Pulsifer, a homunculus growing on the end of Phampoun's tongue, Cugel realises that all those who have preceded him have been eaten, but only after regaling the demon with lurid tales of their misdeeds. By inveiglement, he persuades Pulsifer to visit the upper world. On ascending to the temple above, the gigantic Phampoun, who is violently sensitive to light, awakes and runs amok, demolishing the city. (Chapter V.1)
Cugel escapes by water, down the River Chaim, as far as the Tsombol Marsh. After crossing the Plain of Standing Stones, Cugel rescues a certain Iolo from a pelgrane, only to be caught by a tentacle that emerges from a hole in the ground, a breach into an otherworld created by a magical adjunct worn by the pelgrane. Iolo, more of a swindler even than Cugel, refuses to assist his erstwhile rescuer and composes himself to sleep; during the night Cugel manages to steal Iolo's bagful of dreams and secretes it within the hole into another dimension. In the morning, Iolo releases Cugel from the grip of the tentacle when he promises to help him catch the supposed thief. They travel to Cuirnif, where Iolo had been hoping to exhibit his dream crystals at Duke Orbal's Grand Exposition. Cugel transports the hole to Cuirnif, which he exhibits, giving it the title "Nowhere". However, he is forced to enter his own exhibit in order to retrieve Iolo's bagful of dreams. The dream crystals, contaminated with the alien stuff of the otherworld, cause Duke Orbal violently unpleasant visions when he samples them in order to judge the winner of the Grand Exposition. (Chapter V.2)
Cugel leaves Cuirnif in a hurry. He finally reaches Almery, where Iucounu repeatedly attempts to steal the Skybreak Spatterlight from him, but is thwarted because the scale absorbs all the magical spells aimed at Cugel. Finally, Cugel fools Iucounu, who has clothed himself in the scales of Sadlark ready to become one with the Overworld entity, into touching his forehead with the Skybreak Spatterlight; Iucounu is instantly absorbed, annihilated. The now complete Sadlark attempts to catch Cugel but stumbles into a fountain and the water dissolves the bonds of force linking together his scales. Cugel is left in possession of Iucounu's manse, Pergolo. (Chapters VI.1, VI.2)
Themes.
The sea voyage.
Chapter II of "Cugel's Saga", "From Saskervoy to the Tustvold Mud Flats", with three sub-chapters: "Aboard the "Galante"", "Lausicaa" and "The Ocean of Sighs", is structured around one of Vance's favourite narrative themes: description of a voyage by sailing ship. The theme can also be found in "Servants of the Wankh" (1969), "The Pnume" (1970), "" (1976), "Showboat World" (1975), and "Lyonesse" (1983). Variants of the same theme are the overland sailing wagons of the Wind-runners of the Palga plateau in "The Gray Prince" (1974) and, in "Cugel's Saga", the ship that is towed through the air in chapter IV.2 "The Caravan" after being magically charged with Cugel's gravity-repellent boot dressing.
Otherworlds.
Another significant recurring theme in the work of Jack Vance also to be found in "Cugel's Saga" is that of the "otherworld". In "The Bagful of Dreams" (chapter V.2) a magical blue egg worn by a pelgrane around its neck shatters on the ground creating a portal into an otherworld, which turns out to be an interminable region of undulating "black spongy stuff" whose sole inhabitant is an irascible, gelatinous, tentacular hulk named Uthaw. Similarly, in "The Green Pearl", a large part of the narrative is set in the otherworld of Tanjecterly, which Visbhume tricks Glyneth into entering via a hut in the Forest of Tantrevalles. "Twitten's Almanack", part of Vance's "Lyonesse" mythos, describes a number of such otherworlds, of which only Tanjecterly will support human life: Paador, Nith, and Woon; Hidmarth and Skurre, which are "purulent places infested with demons"; Cheng, which might be home to the sandestins; Pthopus, which is a "single torpid soul", and Underwood, which is "empty save for a moaning sound." In "The Seventeen Virgins" (chapter V.1), Cugel enters a subworld, or "demon-realm", inhabited by the photophobic demonic deity Phampoun, who communicates via a homuncular excrescence on the end of his tongue. The narrative device of the journey into the demon subworld is employed at far greater length in Michael Shea's sequel/homage to "The Eyes of the Overworld", "A Quest for Simbilis" (1974), and in his novellas "Come Then Mortal, We Shall Seek Her Soul" and "The Fishing of the Demon Sea", which form part of "Nifft the Lean" (1982). The subworld theme is also present in one of Vance's earliest Dying Earth tales, "Guyal of Sfere" in "The Dying Earth" (1950), in which the demon-lord Blikdak creates a breach in the vast underground Museum of Man as he tries to rise up from his own subjacent infernal realm.
The Skybreak Spatterlight.
At the beginning of "Cugel's Saga" the eponymous hero takes employment at Flutic, a manse in the land of Cutz, where an archaeological operation is underway to recover the constituent scales of an Overworld entity named Sadlark. During the Eighteenth Aeon, a demon by the name of Underherd is said to have "interfered with the overworld", and Sadlark, in trying to set matters right, plunged into the miry pit now found at the back of Flutic, where he became "disassociated". Master Twango, the owner of Flutic, deals in the scales, selling them to the firm of Soldinck and Mercantides, whose end customer is Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Iucounu, believing himself to be Sadlark's avatar, is in the process of reassembling the Overworld entity, with which he intends to merge himself. Twango's basic reference work on Sadlark's scales is Haruviot's "Intimate Anatomy of Several Overworld Personages", which allows him to classify them as "ordinaries" or "specials". The latter, possessing a greater charge of Overworld force, are astringent to the touch. Examples of specials are Clover-leaf Femurials, Dorsal Double Luminants, Interlocking Sequalions, Lateral Flashers, Juncture Spikes, the Turret Frontal Lapidative and the Malar Astrangal, which fits over the elbow part of Sadlark's third arm.
The most valuable and potent scale of all is the Pectoral Skybreak Spatterlight, or "protonastic centrum", whose very touch is deadly, absorbing any living creature with which it comes into contact. Iucounu describes it as follows: "The protonastic centrum is the node which binds the other scales with lines of force. This node is the soul and force of Sadlark. With the node in place, Sadlark lives once again; indeed Sadlark was never dead, but merely disassociated" (Chapter VI.2). Through sheer luck, Cugel obtains the Skybreak Spatterlight from the mire at Flutic, and the scale is the weapon whereby he ultimately defeats his arch-enemy, Iucounu. The Skybreak Spatterlight is central to the plot at a number of points, for example, during Cugel's encounter with the magician Faucelme. It is also by means of the Skybreak Spatterlight that Cugel is able to defeat Nissifer, the monstrous insectoid hybrid of sime and bazil that preys on the passengers of the "Avventura". The Skybreak Spatterlight lends an overarching unity to the separate picaresque episodes of "Cugel's Saga", with the exception of the chapters "The Seventeen Virgins" and "The Bagful of Dreams", which were written and published earlier than the rest of the book and in which Sadlark's protonastic centrum is not mentioned.
Fantastic ethnologies.
One of the defining features of Jack Vance's work is his invention of fictional ethnologies, which encompass culinary, sartorial, marital, economic, architectural, musical, jurisprudential, social etc. customs and practices, as well as, in many cases most importantly, religious beliefs. Significant examples of such fantastic ethnologies in "Cugel's Saga" are the cultures to be found in Lausicaa, Tustvold, Gundar and Lumarth. The island of Lausicaa (chapter II.2) is notable for its matriarchal social system, which requires that all adult males go "under the veil". At Tustvold (chapter III.1), the women practise trades (cobbler, tanner, butcher etc.), while their husbands pass their time as idle stylites, basking atop columns in the health-giving rays of the dying sun. The height of a husband's column is an index of the wife's position in the social hierarchy. The description of Gundar (chapter V.1) provides a fuller ethnology, including aspects such as architecture and costume, as well as their historical/mythical rationale. Gundar is the last isolated outpost of the Order of Solar Emosynaries, who believe that by focusing the heat of a fire on the solar disk by means of a complicated contraption of lenses they prevent the dying sun from being extinguished. The natives of Lumarth (chapter V.1) are demon-worshippers who hypocritically justify their religious practices using an elaborate doctrine of altruism and benevolence.
Publication history.
The two separate sections that make up chapter V of "Cugel's Saga" were published and, it may be assumed, written a number of years prior to the rest of the book. Unlike "The Eyes of the Overworld", "Cugel's Saga" is therefore only partially a "fix-up". "The Seventeen Virgins", chapter V.1, was first published in the October 1974 issue of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction", almost a decade before the first edition of the complete novel. "The Bagful of Dreams", chapter V.2, was included in "" (Nelson Doubleday, 1977), edited by Lin Carter, a fantasy collection that also featured work by Poul Anderson, Rik Bryant, John Jakes, Katherine Kurtz and Michael Moorcock.
The first U.S. edition was published in 1983 by Timescape Books. The first U.K. edition was published by Panther/Granada in 1985 and reprinted the following year by Grafton.
A second U.S. edition was published by Underwood–Miller, in a print run of 550 signed and numbered copies and featuring artwork by Stephen Fabian, eight months after the original hardcover edition. The final book in the Dying Earth series, "Rhialto the Marvellous" (1984), was likewise published in a special edition by Brandywyne Books, "slipcased, signed and limited to 1000 copies" and also featuring artwork by Stephen Fabian, but this time preceded the Timescape hardcover edition by three months.
In 1999, the Science Fiction Book Club published "The Compleat Dying Earth", comprising all four books in the Dying Earth series. A second omnibus including "Cugel's Saga", with the title "Tales of the Dying Earth", was published by Gollancz in 2000, as no. 4 in its Fantasy Masterworks series.
In 2005, "Cugel's Saga" was republished under the author's preferred title, "Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight", as volume 35 in the 44-volume Vance Integral Edition.
Textual variants.
The first six paragraphs of the short story "The Seventeen Virgins" published in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" (October 1974) differ substantially from the chapter of the same title published in "Cugel's Saga" (1983) in style, content and the characterisation of Cugel. In the earlier version of the text, Cugel is said to have "made a hasty departure" from a place called Julle, where he suffered "indignities" at the hands of his enemies, but also managed to cause them "confusion." In the later version, Cugel has fled from Kaspara Vitatus, at the end of the preceding chapter ("The Caravan"), and the opening two paragraphs cursorily narrate how he baffles the pursuit and then, emerging from hiding, shakes his fist and shouts curses after the distant figures of the angry mob as they return to town. Where the later version briefly narrates Cugel's journey across the wilderness known as the Pale Rugates without any indication as to his inner state - he is described merely as marching for an unspecified number of days, eating "ramp, burdock, squallix and an occasional newt" to fend off starvation - the earlier version explores Cugel's affective reactions to his environment and situation, for example: "The breadth of the sky exalted his soul; the emptiness of the far distances caused him fatigue and despondency." Similarly, in a "spasm of self-assertion", Cugel delivers the following soliloquy in the first version:
A comparison of the following paragraph in its two variants will serve to show how in the later version Vance has honed his prose style, paring away redundant adverbs, descriptive language and psychological details:
Reception.
Algis Budrys noted that "Vance holds and holds you with various devices while you are gradually coming to know and appreciate his unlovable hero."
External links.
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