A bibliography for Jack Vance

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Seven Exits from Bocz

Author: Jack Vance
Year written: 1949
Author’s age at the time: 33
Year published: 1952
Publication: Rhodomagnetic Digest
Dutch title: De zeven uitgangen van Bocz
Genre: short story, SF

Comment: A “twilight zone” short story.

Quotes:

Everything was breathlessly quiet. The house stood ghostly white in the moonlight among old trees, three stories of archaic elegance, with lights showing dim yellow along the bottom floor.

“Ah,” and Trasek passed on to the second, an abstraction. “Now this,” and Trasek nodded, “is a nightmare.” Indeed, the shapes seemed unreal, and when the mind reached to grasp them, they appeared to slip away from comprehension, and the colors equally odd - nameless off-tones, bright tints the eye saw but could not name. Trasek shook his head disapprovingly, to Horzabky’s amusement, and passed on to the third. This was likewise an abstraction, but composed in a quieter spirit - horizontal lines and stripes of gold, silver, copper, and other metallic colors.

Republished in The World-Thinker and Other Stories, Spatterlight 2012.