Book description
Travel out along the galaxy's Perseid Arm. Branch off to follow the ten
thousand stars of Mircea's Wisp. Eventually you will come to the Purple
Rose System - three stars, Lorca, Sing and Syrene, that seem about to
drift away into the void. Three planets circle Syrene. On one, Cadwal,
there is Life. Long ago the Naturalist Society of Earth had listed
Cadwal as a natural preserve. An administration centre had been set up
and staffed to protect the planet from all exploitation. Araminta
Station. Now, centuries later, the young Glawen Clattuc is beginning to
wonder what the future may hold for him in the hierarchic, carefully
ordered hereditary society that is life on Cadwal. 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.
