Series
Big Planet
Jack Vance · 2 novels · 1952–1975
Big Planet imagines an enormous, metal-poor world settled generations earlier by cultists, anarchists, and other Earth malcontents, whose low population density lets each of its societies calcify into its own petty, often brutal order; the story follows Claude Glystra, an Earth diplomat who crash-lands and must cross forty thousand miles of the planet's patchwork territories on foot to reach the one enclave still loyal to Earth. Jack Vance's 1957 novel — an early landmark of the fully realized planetary-romance setting — got a single sequel decades later, Showboat World, revisiting the same world without continuing Glystra's story.
Summary by Loreful, from public sources
- Genre
- Theme
- Place
- Time
- Tone
- Audience
The order the books came out.
- Omnibus editions(1 edition)
Map
Big Planet at the centre, its books fanned around what holds them. Pick anything for its details, and zoom out for similar series in orbit — the reading order above lists the same books as text.
Stats
By decade
- 1950s1
- 1960s0
- 1970s1
Shape
2 novels
1 author · completed series
reads like:science fictionart and artistsother star systemsfar futureadventurousadult
Mood
Bright and intense: 100% of this series' placed works, the catalog's 44%.
this series · the catalog · one dot = one book2 of 2 works carry a tone
Edges of the map
- Big Planetdarkest · calmest
- Showboat Worldbrightest · most intense