# World-building in short stories *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 28 Jun 2003* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Nicholas Gevers *28 Jun 2003, 07:43* Interesting comments regarding "Semley's Necklace". It strikes that me that one quite famous novelette--Jack Vance's "The New Prime"--builds not one world but six, each in a dense vignette. That story dates from the Fifties. Vance had the cheek to make contemporary Earth one of the six, a place no less exotic and bizarre than the rest. --Nick Gevers. --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *28 Jun 2003, 15:52 · follows Nicholas Gevers* > Nick Gevers wrote: > It > strikes that me that one quite famous novelette--Jack > Vance's "The New Prime"--builds not one world but six, > each in a dense vignette. That story dates from the > Fifties. Vance had the cheek to make contemporary > Earth one of the six, a place no less exotic and > bizarre than the rest. Yes, I did think of "The New Prime," which is an interesting story for a number of reasons. But as you say, the worlds are very sketchy -- this is not detrimental to the story at all . . . in a way, this is a Vancean approach to Le Guin's technique in "Semley's Necklace" in that Vance presents several all at once, but he is making them from Vance-scratch rather than using sf and fairy tale stock. (Granted that "Vance-scratch" involves a patented blend of sf and fairy tale stock!) I do like the story. It has some unusual twists, even for Vance. It would seem to follow what I said about "Moon Moth": every social detail/world has a direct crucial bearing on the story and the conclusion; it is longer than a short story. =mantis= Sirius Fiction booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley http://www.siriusfiction.com/ eBay Auctions http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=mr.sirius ---