Ports of Call - Hardcover

Vance, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312858019 ISBN 13: 9780312858018

Publisher: Tor Books, 1998

Synopsis

Myron's family insisted that he set himself on a course of sober education, the study of economics, and Myron dutifully applied himself. But Myron had an aunt - his great-aunt Hester Lajoie, a woman of great wealth and even greater flamboyance of nature. And when Dame Hester came into possession of a spaceyacht, Myron suddenly saw his long-suppressed dreams of adventure bloom into new life. The adventure begins with Dame Hester's determination to find, and take treatment at, a clinic reputed to restore youth to its wealthy clients. But space travel with Dame Hester is a difficult proposition, and Myron's life becomes almost unbearably adventurous when he quarrels with his aunt and she puts him off the ship on a remote planet, leaving him to make his own way across the Gaean Reach.

About this title

Review:

‘Grand yarn-spinning’
Kirkus Reviews

‘Vance at his most effortless and pleasant: a romp’
American Library Association
On Night Lamp:

‘Buy it. It’s cheaper and at least as exotic as two weeks in the sun’
Financial Times

‘The quintessential Vance novel. Rush out and buy this glorious book’
Interzone

‘Night Lamp yields rich rewards in its humorous complexities’
Publishers Weekly

From the Back Cover:

Myron Tany has taken a degree in space studies...but he has much to learn when he first boards a ship. In thrall to his zany aunt Dame Hester Lajoie, Myron accompanies her when she sets off in her space yacht to find a faraway fountain of youth. Her captain flatters her agreeably, but when Myron points out that the man is a swindler, Hester maroons poor Myron on an inhospitable planet with barely his passage home. Thus Myron is given the perfect opportunity to live out his childhood fantasies of intergalactic adventure, alien encounters and exotic romance. Or starve to death. Luckily, the tramp cargo vessel Glicca is just then in need of a supercargo, and Myron is it.

"Jack Vance is a peerless creator of strange landscapes."
FINANCIAL TIMES

"From a master storyteller...Grand yarn-spinning"
KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Vance at his most effortless and pleasant"
BOOKLIST

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0312858019
• ISBN 13: 9780312858018
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300