Nitpick re: Vance and prehistoric star travel

It was recently mentioned on this list that Jack Vance has prehistoric humans traveling to the stars in three of his novels. While this is correct, I'd like to point out that only in "Space Opera" is there a claim of an ancient starfaring civilization on Earth (from Wales, iirc). In both Star King and the Tschai novels, prehistoric humans were taken from Earth by an alien starfaring civilization and dropped off on another planet, which neatly sidesteps the entire "then where are the remains of their industrial infrastructure?" issue. I doubt this hypothesis would work with 5HC, though who knows? Yves Meynard

I wrote something along those lines for "Vance Space" (my chapbook on Vancean sf) and David Langford took me to task on some of my sloppy details regarding SPACE OPERA. First, the ancient humans from Earth developed ftl and went to planet Yan something like 27,500 years ago. We don't really know where they were on Earth, as I understand it. (I had written of them as being "proto-Welsh.") When their dissident descendants came back to Earth, they crash-landed on the Isle of Man, then they fled to Wales to escape persecution. (There is the Wales connection.) This happened about 200 years prior to the main action in SPACE OPERA. I hereby admit my errors and apologize. On to STAR KING: in addition to what Yves wrote, the aliens picked up Neanderthals, and 50,000 years later dropped off on Earth their altered (by alien influence, if not direct genetic tinkering) descendants, which we call Cro-Magnon (thus explaining the Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon transition puzzle). This plays well with the 5HC situation, or so it seems to me--the sameness/alien-ness of humanoids on this planet, like (but not limited to) Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. Further Vance/Wolfe mania: The situation on planet Blue, where invading aliens come periodically from a mysterious star/planet in the sky, and both(? several) sides are trying to use modified versions of aliens/humans for/against each other, and a third group of mysterious aboriginal humanoids are invisible yet omnipresent, seemingly primitive yet possessing magical technology . . . this bears some resemblence to the award-winning THE DRAGON MASTERS by Jack Vance. =mantis= Sirius Fiction booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley PEACE: a timeline WITH dates! Come see! http://www.siriusfiction.com/