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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
To: <urth at urth.net>
So for the more dedicated Vanceans on the list, I suppose
the obvious question would be whether I, as a rather casual
reader, am missing anything here? This book is the one most
often cited when recommending Vance to a Wolfe fan; other
than the gross-scale influence on New Sun, the fundamental
idea (which, actually, wasn't entirely new here either) of
this incredibly ancient Earth, is there something deeper?
--Blattid
Of course not: but the idea was a hell of a lot more novel and powerful then than it is now.
I think there is also a cross-influence from Clark Ashton Smith, whose Zothique stories set in a far future Southern continent were perhaps the first mass pulp exploitation of this idea, and were an influence on both writers.