The Eyes of the Overworld
by Jack Vance, Arthur Morey · first published 1972
56% recommend22% neutral22% critical
Why HN recommends it
Hilarious, self-contained entry in Jack Vance's Dying Earth series, built around a quest to steal magic eyeglasses; suits readers new to the series or fans of its comic tone.
Common criticism: Some find the humor juvenile and parts hard to read for modern audiences.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
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…forefront of their stories, like Moorcock wanted. Tolkien (and the pre-modern works he imitated) put those elements in the background and make the reader dig them out. Agreed about Jack Vance. I recommend Eyes of the Overworld/Cugel the Clever.
on “The Anti-Tolkien” ↗Anyone interested in D&D should understand that it originates from Jack Vance's Dying Earth novels. I highly recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Overworld
on “The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons and Dragons” ↗Jack Vance's scifi/fantasy classic "The Eyes of the Overworld" starts with a quest which has the protagonist steal magical eye glasses which make the denizens of a village who literally live drenched in shit and mud and eat garbage believe they are lords and ladies…
on “Selfie 2 Waifu” ↗The classic is Dying Earth by Jack Vance, but my favorite of the series is Eyes of the Overworld, and you'd be fine to read that first since the novels of the series are self-contained. My opinion is that the subgenre should by definition be self-consciously set in that world or something similar,…
on “The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons” ↗Jack Vance's The Dying Earth Series, especially The Eyes of the Overworld.
on “Ask HN: Which SciFi novel(s) would you want made into a TV series?” ↗…Witcher but good. Second Place (Rachel Cusk) was a batshit boilerroom melodrama. My first Cusk, will read more. The first three books of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series are great, but particularly The Eyes of the Overworld, which I was surprised to find was hilarious. I reread some classic Philip K Dick, including Flow My Tears and Stigmata, and More than Human (Theodore Sturgeon). The first two books of The Dark Star…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2022 and recommend for 2023” ↗…be tolerated by a narrow set of readers. They're probably recommended because that narrow set used to make up a bigger fraction of the sci-fi readership. Dying Earth is incredibly puerile and laddish. Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga obviously have very little plot. They're just these repetitive picaresques where it's one hallucinatory thing happening after another, and none of it matters for more than a scene. It's…
on “Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)” ↗Do note that while Jack Vance is wonderful, there's some really ugly stuff in subsequent Dying Earth books (Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga) that make it a bit hard to take for modern readers. It's not explicitly described, but having the protagonist (who is admittedly a dick, but not really portrayed as an anti-hero per…
on “Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)” ↗I can agree with your criticism of plot of Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga, but Vance's worlbuilding is beautiful. It is a shame that most later fantasy and d&d worlds turned into banal Tolkien-knockoffs.
on “Gene Wolfe Turned Science Fiction into High Art (2019)” ↗Yes! I have a similar reaction. I often think of Jack Vance’s “Eyes of the Overworld”. They hid the reality of a decaying world behind a fabulous facade.
on “Apple reportedly cuts production of Vision Pro headset after poor sales” ↗This is how the "violet cusps" from The Eyes of the Overworld were made.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eyes_of_the_Overworld "There, Cugel finds two bizarre villages, one occupied by wearers of the magic violet lenses, the other by peasants who work on behalf…
on “AI-designed camera only records objects of interest while being blind to others” ↗…mysterious and often unreliable. It sometimes comes with a price. Main characters often do not understand it and cannot use it, or they misuse it to terrifying or hilarious results (e.g. Cugel in The Eyes of the Overworld). The supernatural must be unknowable, otherwise it simply turns into the natural. "A wizard/hacker did it" is simply bad writing.
on “Earthsea – A Rival to Tolkien and George RR Martin (2015)” ↗