Showboat World

Rating:
Summary: A genuinely unique and hilarious adventure
Review: Had to rate this just to help overcome the injustice of the one star review above. This is a book I've read time and again over the last 10 years and it never fails to amaze me. Vance's language alone takes you to another planet. The vistas and cultures he creates are savagely beautiful and ironic. His characters are loveable, laughable, inventive and twisted up in plots, sub-plots and intrigues that are mad works of clever comical genius.
Jack Vance is wildly unlike any other author in the world. He can show you life in a light unlike any you have previously imagined...A true gift that only a great book like this can achieve.

Rating:
Summary: Cultural fantasy
Review: I quite agree with the review by James Beerbower. This is a caleidoscope of hypothetical cultures, traversed by a group of people who get by on an almost animal cunning. However it escapes me why anyone would call this SF or even would want to read it.

Rating:
Summary: Rascals and Rogues Galore!
Review: Showboat World is probably my favorite Vance story. Some of my other favorites include Trullion, Araminta Station, and The Moon Moth. Apollon Zamp has more character flaws than almost any other Vance "hero" besides Cugel. In my humble opinion, this story would adapt well to film. Brad Pitt would have to put on a few pounds but would be a natural for Zamp. I know there is a role for Patrick Stewart in there somewhere. Can you imagine the showboats? The opera singers and orchestras? The jugglers, clowns, contortionists, midgets, mimes, actors, and so much more! Where is Cecil B. DeMille?

Rating:
Summary: Picaresque Classic
Review: Tells the story of ship captain Apollon Gamp's journey upriver to play at a kings showboat competition - a rather simple framework for a compelling and gorgeous collage of thieves, artists and discordant cultures. The Showboat itself is a gorgeous hybrid of Mississippi boat and travelling opera; requiring stage magicians, dancing girls, catapults and a hereditary caste of engineers.

Along the way Zamp has to deal with (for example) a town that are run by the 'Actuarialists' who require the removal of all references to death or birth from the theatre program. Or Port Whant where wearing yellow is a sexual invitation. Indeed all luxuriance of imagination that we have come to expect from Vance.

Of course he must deal with equally rascally competitors - Lemuriel Boke who wore 'striped garments of black, red and brown, and adorned his head with the triple tiered bonnet of an Ultimate Pantologist; he blanched his skin stark white and spoke in a cellar deep voice.' Or Umber Stroon who, in contrast, 'used terms of grandiloquent vainglory in connection with himself and equally striking figures of disparagement in regard to his competitors.' And a dozen others. Naturally both the journey and winning the contest require every resource of artistry and connivery.

Obviously the novel has a number of similarities with the better known 'Space Opera' but the episodes are probably a bit better because the show boat captains are mixing with human (albeit exotic) rather than alien cultures -- where Vance is a little weaker. The plot, meanwhile, is considerably stronger and just as witty.

Rating:
Summary: I Too Want A Showboat!!
Review: This is one of my very favorite non-magical Vance works, and it is amazing. I want a Showboat so BAD after I read (and reread) this book...! I would call mine "The Golden Conceit." LOL

Rating:
Summary: I Too Want A Showboat!!
Review: This is one of my very favorite non-magical Vance works, and it is amazing. I want a Showboat so BAD after I read (and reread) this book...! I would call mine "The Golden Conceit." LOL

Rating:
Summary: I Too Want A Showboat!!
Review: This is one of my very favorite non-magical Vance works, and it is amazing. I want a Showboat so BAD after I read (and reread) this book...! I would call mine "The Golden Conceit." LOL

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and Enjoyable
Review: _Showboat World_ takes place on Big Planet, which was introduced in _Big Planet_ (duh). Here we follow the story of Apollon Zamp as he attempts to travel a great length to enter a showboat contest. The novel is a vastly entertaining picaresque, as he depicts how rival showboat owners attempt to sabotage each other's efforts; how the showboat owner must manage his performers, who do not shrink from stealing from him; how entertainments must be modified to avoid riling the inhabitants of the various towns and cities along the river, each with its own unique culture. The beguiling female lead, Damsel Blance-Aster, provides an element of mystery that is only resolved at the end of the novel. Highly recommended.