Book description
Arrabus on the planet Wyst is an "egalistic" nation, where
everyone is supposedly equal to everyone else. Arrabins work only two
hours per week ("drudge"), which is drawn at random each week.
In return, they receive food in the form of gruff, deedle, and
wobbly-all synthetically produced food-and are housed in gigantic block
tenements. Natural food ("bonter") is very rare, resulting in
a flourishing black market trade with the "Weirdlands", the
lands beyond Arrabus. An executive committee of four, selected at random
and known as the Whisperers, governs Arrabus. Jack Vance (1916 - )
Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining, engineering and
journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War
he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice. He started
contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the mid 1940s and
published his first book, The Dying Earth, in 1950. Among his many books
are The Dragon Masters, for which he won his first Hugo Award, Big
Planet, The Anome, and the Lyonesse sequence. He has won the Hugo,
Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, amongst others, and in 1997 was named a
Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
