Jack Vance was born in 1916 and followed engineering and physics studies, then journalism, at the University of California. His first published novel, The Dying Earth (1950), followed several short stories in the '40. He has won several of the most desired prizes of modern Science Fiction, among them the Hugo and Nebula awards, and the Edgar Award for The Man in the Cage.

The outstanding originality of the Gaian Reach stories is a curious blend between pure fantasy (with its cohort of weird and manic tribes, old forgotten monuments and technologies, magic and spells, legendary creatures) and space opera (complete with trading routes, pirates, lone stars and Galaxy-wide central administration). A seemless junction in Jack Vance's Gaian Reach, that bring a very unique and delectable flavour to Science Fiction.

Night Lamp tells the story of a young man's quest for his past and his family. He will discover infamy and murder, perpetrated on the person of his mother. He is helped by his father, Maihac, miraculous survivor of his capture by a sanguinary tribe and gone into hiding to protect his son, and his faithfull engineer, Gaing. They will discover the exploitation and deception of a whole people, and planet.

Night Lamp is a bleak planet, orbiting around a rogue star at the confines of the chartered universe, made of steppes and rocky plains. Its founding people, the Roum are strange people, that avoid at all costs contact with the rest of the Gaian Reach. Aristocrats by election, they delegate all work to an engineered sub-race, devoting all their energy to etiquette and propriety. But their ingnorance of the Galaxy affairs makes them an easy prey to the ruthless exploitation of Asrubal, that managed to obtain the monopoly of outworld exchanges, thus having total control over the prices of imported goods, and the value of exported materials.

Maihac, having landed on Night Lamp hoping to sell a cargo of tools, must break this monopoly to recover his investment. Waiting for the necessary permit, he falls in love with a Roum, the daughter of the chief magistrate. He marries her, but they must flee Night Lamp when Asrubal tries to eliminate them. One of their twin sons is killed, or so it seems, and Maihac captured by the Loklor. His wife manages to escape, with the other son. Established on a small planet, thinking his husband dead but thinking this episode closed, she will nevertheless succumb to Asrubal's tenacity, saving her son Jaro in the process. Fleeing Asrubal's hit man, he his adopted by a child-less couple of university professors, roving the Gaian Reach in search of original musical practices. They will bring him to majority, and a sound education, despairing of his seemingly unreasonable aspiration to become a spaceman. Jaro's unseemly attraction to spaceships will bring him to unknowingly strike a friendship with Gaing. After the accidental death of his adoptive parents, this will bring him the revelation of his past, and lead him to a finally victorious struggle against Asrubal.

In the same spirit, Ports of Call is the story of Myron's bid for the stars. His aunt Hester, an old but rich harridan, only interested in social affairs and gossip, suddenly takes an interest in her space yacht (part of a recent heritage) when she hears about a faraway rejuvenation fountain. But when her prospective captain and lover is proved by Myron to be unfaithfull, Myron is promoted to captain, due to his space studies... alas, theoretical, leaving him with many gaps to fill. But when she again falls in love with the first flattering parasite, and Myron points out that the man is a fraud, she leaves him stranded on a planet with strange customs, with barely his passage home. The choice between getting back, or embarking on a merchant ship, is made for Myron when the Glicca finds itself in need of a supercargo, thanks to the unlawfull antics of the former titulary. Follows numerous and intricate adventures, among those the ferrying of pilgrims with mysterious luggage, an old feud between the engineer and an illusionist, and historic art smuggling.