The book features an assortment of characters, some good, some awful, and some indifferent. It is set in an almost unimaginably distant future when the Sun has dimmed to red, magic has returned, and civilization is spent and withered. Jack Vance did not create the dying earth setting–credit for that concept lies with several Romantic poets and authors–but he assuredly coined the term with the publication of his first book, The Dying Earth (1950). Explicitly, it will “constrict the subject in a pore some forty-five miles below the surface of the earth.” I knew the D&D magic system had been lifted from Vance, but I had to chuckle at such a blatant steal. Step forward a year or two and imagine my surprise when, reading The Eyes of the Overworld, Iucounu the Laughing Magician threatens the scoundrel Cugel the Clever with the spell of Forlorn Encystment. It seemed an oddly specific (and oddly-titled) spell, but who was I to question the wisdom of Robert Kuntz and James Ward? Under the section titled “The New Spells” in the chapter on Finnish mythology, was one called “Forlorn Incistment.” It allowed the caster to immediately bury, harmlessly, his target deep in the ground until released. The first roleplaying book I ever bought was the Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes supplement for D&D. It was sometime during high school I’m sure, but an unapprehended brush with the story came several years earlier. I’m uncertain as to when I first read Jack Vance’s The Eyes of the Overworld (1966).
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