Re: Vance's _Blue World_ -- what Costner's "Waterworld" should have been


"Rich Horton" <rrhorton@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:utt47317gp3avi7hle81gv72vcc15t715s@xxxxxxxxxx
On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:12:01 +0000 (UTC), nospam@xxxxxxxxxx (Paul
Ciszek) wrote:


In article <1181823299.480473.271400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
htn963 <htn963@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I finally got around to reading this and was pleasantly suprised. I
always had the impression this was one of Vance's minor works and
besides which I wasn't keen on reading an sfnal take of Moby ***, but
Vance is in top form here. The world setting is intriguing, the
dialog is filled with the usual dry, Vancean wit, and the
protagonist's solution of how to kill an intelligent giant squid with
hard skin in a "soft" world where metal can not be readily found was
ingenious. One would think a kraken would be a much more suitable
villain for an overblown and overbudgeted movie than a one-eyed ham in
a battleship, but no...

I read this as a novelette/novella/whatever in a collection; are you
reviewing a novel-length version?

The odd thing was, within a week I read another story in another
collection on pretty much exactly the same premise, except that the
civilization was further along.

The novel THE BLUE WORLD was was derived from a novella called "The
Kragen" in FANTASTIC, July 1964. To the best of my knowledge that has
been reprinted once, in MYTHICAL BEASTIES, a 1986 anthology edited by
Asimov, Greenberg, and Waugh.

And, as you'd expect, in the VIE.


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