The Magnificent Showboats was originally published as Showboat World in 1975 and is set in the same locale as Vance’s novel Big Planet – a vast planet in another solar system in which a number of strange cultures live in small towns along an intricate river network. These rivers are plied by a number of showboats who bring entertainment and culture to the strange inhabitants of Big Planet. While this is nominally a work of science fiction, there is no real evidence of advanced technology, though we do have the sense that it is set in a far future where Earth (and the play Macbeth) have been almost entirely forgotten.
Please note that some plot spoilers follow.
The novel follows the misadventures of showboat captain Apollon Zamp as he struggles to take a crew of acrobats, actors, and magicians far upriver to participate in a contest sponsored by an enigmatic and eccentric king. Zamp is a rogue, though a lovable one, and he fairly quickly loses both his showboat and accumulated fortune. He must ally himself with the parsimonious Throdorus Gassoon, a rival showboat captain who vies with Zamp for the attentions of Damsel Blanche-Aster, who also desperately wants to travel upriver. The two captains continually quarrel over what play to perform (they eventually settle on a reenactment of the classic Macbeth, though Zamp edits the play to offer a more entertaining spectacle), production expenses, and how best to deal with the savage and unpredictable customers they encounter along the way. The finale (which I will not spoil here) offers a dramatic and unexpected reversal that caught me off guard. I had thought all along as I read that I knew how the story would end but I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case.
This was a delightful and comedic tale. Not a vast amount of characterization (Zamp, after all, could have just as easily been Cugel), but it was certainly fun. I give it 4 stars out of 5.
Review copyright 2010 J. Andrew Byers
This looks like great fun! I’m ordering a copy — I love books about strange travelling entertainment — some of Delany’s works come to mind…
Terrific, I think you’ll really enjoy this one! I did a quick search for copies of “Showboat World” (that’s the title you’ll find it under) on Amazon.com and BookFinder.com and there are plenty of copies available. BookFinder has several readily available for under $5 + shipping.
Which books by Delaney do you recommend? The only thing I’ve ever read by his was “Star in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand” and that was in a college course I took on fantasy and science fiction literature. I enjoyed the book a lot (it’s truly bizarre, but has a great premise and Delany is a masterful writer) but I’ve never tried anything else from him.
My favorite Delany is Nova (1968) followed by Babel-17 (1966). I’m obsessed with 1960s sci-fi so I’m somewhat bias in this regard — Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) is very interesting although you need to be somewhat acclimated to his bizarre style of writing. He came out (he writes from the interesting sci-fi perspective of a gay African American) in the 70s so the content of his works (they become primarily social sci-fi) changes drastically… So, start in the 60s before you move into his later works…
Excellent, thanks for the recommendations! I will definitely have to investigate Delany. He seems to write fiction that’s very challenging for the reader (at least based on the one book of his that I’ve read and what I’ve heard about the rest of his work), but he’s clearly amazingly talented.
He teaches literature at Temple University presently…. Rarely do sci-fi authors get recognized as truly literary writers…
Another great travelogue-type book that is also very reminiscent of Vance is Robert Silverberg’s “Lord Valentine’s Castle”. It’s the first book of what became the Majipoor series, many installments of which I found a little dull, but this one is different. Majipoor is itself a Big Planet, absolutely huge in comparison to Earth. The book is a fun read and the writing is top-notch. I always recommend this one to my friends who don’t care for Silverberg usually– this one seems to be the exception.
Other good material in this vein is Matthew Hughes’ “Black Brillion” as well as his duo about Filidor Vesh, “Fools Errant” and “Fool Me Twice”. All take place on Old Earth millions of years in the future in the era before magic becomes dominant. Hughes has written many other great books set in his Old Earth of the Archonate, and all of them are great. Just look him up or go to http://www.archonate.com... Happy reading.
Thanks for those recommendations! I actually love “Lord Valentine’s Castle” and heartily endorse it. I read the first two sequels to it and liked them somewhat less, but I want to reread them all, as I suspect I might like them better now.
I own a copy of Matthew Hughes’ “Majestrum” but have not yet read it. His work comes highly recommended to me by a friend whose reading tastes are very similar to my own, so I am very much looking forward it checking them out. I’ve never been entirely certain which of Hughes Archonate books to read first though (the sequencing has always left me slightly confused).
Yeah, I’m not sure what order to read Hughes’ Archonate books either…
I finished (and just reviewed) Showboat World! Thanks for the suggestion, it was definitely fun and I arrived at the same rating as you…