Tschai Universe

Tschai is an old, overburdened planet turning beneath the star Carina 4269, two hundred light-years from Earth and thick with menace, ceremony, and exquisite bad faith. Onto it falls Adam Reith, a scout whose ship is destroyed above him, leaving him alone and wanting one thing only: to go home. Standing between him and the sky are four rival races who have divided Tschai between them across uncounted ages — the reptilian Chasch, the predatory Dirdir, the amphibian Wankh, and the ancient, subterranean Pnume. Each keeps a caste of humans remade in its masters' image: Chaschmen, Dirdirmen, Wankhmen, and Pnumekin, who ape alien faces and manners and have forgotten they were ever otherwise. The whole world belongs to Jack Vance, told in four short novels — City of the Chasch, Servants of the Wankh, The Dirdir, and The Pnume, published 1968 to 1970. One power per book, one predicament per book: to recover his ship, to steal one, to build one, to flee into the tunnels of the last. Expect cold irony, baroque courtesy laid over casual cruelty, and a traveler's delight in strange customs precisely observed. Newcomers begin at City of the Chasch and read straight through — the four are a single journey, in order.