The Last Castle was originally published in Galaxy in April, 1966. It won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. The Last Castle is the first of two Jack Vance stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series.

The Last Castle is set on a future Earth that humans have abandoned and later returned to. With their return, they brought a civilization which was based on a strong caste system Gentlemen were humans who lived in the castles which were established across the planets. Other humans, Nomads and Expiationists, lived outside the castles and were viewed as barely more than animals. Serving the Gentlemen in the castles were the Peasants, Phanes, Birds, and Mek, various races which were brought back to Earth with the humans in order to perform certain tasks.

The novella opens with the destruction of Castle Janeil, the penultimate castle after the rest have been destroyed. The castle of the tile, Castle Hagedorn, becomes to focal point of the story and the gentlemen who live there try to figure out what has happened to the other castles and why all of the Meks seem to have disappeared.

Vance depicts the civilization of the Gentlemen as arrogant and decadent. Each focuses his attention on a specific area or art or history or collecting and views himself as one of the masters of the world. The servants are beneath notice, only existing to make the Gentlemen’s life easy to live without regard for their concerns. The Gentleman have little, if any, practical knowledge, and what knowledge they do have is suspect in its accuracy.

Much of the story follows Xanten, who has left the safety of Castle Hageborn to track down the missing Meks and, once he realizes that they are in revolt against their Gentlemen overlords, to seek to mitigate that damage already done by recruiting assistance from the Nomads and Expiationists, or possibly train the Peasants or other alien races to form an army against the Meks.

Xanten’s quest goes about as well as can be expected, with everyone he approaches feeling that the Gentlemen have brought the revolt upon themselves and their arrogance makes the other humans less likely to want to help them. Vance does an excellent job of portraying a world which is beset by grievances which people can’t overcome.

World building, of course, is one of Vance’s strengths, and he has built a complex world in The Last Castle. While the various Humans and Meks form the primary races he looks at, with the reader understanding the Meks’ issues better than the Human characters can, he also depicts the Birds as grudging servants, although they don’t have the ambition or cooperative skills to revolt on their own, instead serving the Humans in a passive-aggressive manner. The Peasants and Phanes are outlined, but barely shown and what the reader learns of them come through the unreliable narrative of the Gentlemen.

Vance’s world-building includes several footnotes in which he takes the time to explain that the narrative is a less than faithful translation of the terms used in the world, along with an explanation of what those terms actually are. These footnotes aren’t essential to the plot, but they provide added depth and context to the story Vance is telling, making the Earth of The Last Castle feel more real.

Even though the Gentlemen, particularly Xanten, are the viewpoint characters, the reader is not meant to sympathize with them. Their arrogance, their position at the top of a caste system that relegates entire species to servitude, and their decadence, makes it difficult to connect with them. Instead, the reader quickly comes to sympathize with the Meks’ cause, reinforced by the attitudes of the Nomads and the Expiationists toward the Gentlemen. At the same time, the Meks rarely appear in the story as individuals. The one taken hostage is barely more than a prop for Xanten, although when Xanten finally gets around to questioning him, he reveals more about the Meks’ species, if not their revolution.

There is a pessimism to The Last Castle as every venue Xanten tries turns out to be a dead end. The fate of the Gentlemen and their culture appears to be foredestined. Despite this, Vance does not take the easy way out. He attempts to create an ending that is equally fair, or perhaps unfair, to all of the parties. One of the Gentlemen, Claghorn, shows signs that the Gentlemen might be able to adapt, which provides a hint of optimism in the story, even if he is ostracized by his fellows, including Xanten, who comes to blame him for the revolt.

In the end, the complex world building of The Last Castle is what carries the story. The characters are not sympathetic enough for the reader to particularly care about their fate. While the Meks are reasonable well defined, the other species are generally little more than the superficial descriptions given them by the ruling caste.

Nightwings was originally published in Galaxy in September, 1986. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, winning the former. Nightwings is the third of five Robert Silverberg stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series. Silverberg took Nightwings and two other novella and stitched them into a fixup novel, also called Nightwings. Both Nightwings and The Last Castle had previously appeared together in the 1971 anthology The Hugo Winners, Volume Two, edited by Isaac Asimov.

Set on a far future earth in which the remnants of modern cities still exist in a decrepit state, the story follows a Watcher, a member of a caste which has the sole purpose of checking for a potential alien invasion. The method for doing so is never fully explained, except it employs a cartload of equipment that he pushes with him in his travels. He is joined by Avluela, a Flier, a slight woman with butterfly wings who could soar above the world. The third member of their band is Gorman, a Changeling without a caste.

The caste system in Nightwings is as rigid as the one depicted in Vance’s novella, although Silverberg’s castes are less antagonistic toward each other, understanding that each caste has its own role to play in society. In fact, his main character receives the harshest treatment from members of his own guild when he arrives in Roum and is told there are so many Watchers there that they can’t give him a place to stay.

Needing a place to stay, the three go as supplicants to the Prince of Roum, despite having been warned that he is “a hard and cold and cruel man” according to a Recorder they had met on the road who was leaving Roum to make his way to Jorslem. The Watcher had declined the invitation to join the Recorder in order to continue into Roum. The Prince of Roum agreed to put them up, for the price of sleeping with Avluela, which the Watcher finds distasteful, makes Gorman angry, and which seemingly has little impact on Avluela. Although this becomes an issue in the story, it is treated as a minor point and almost dismissed.

The main focus in the Watcher’s own sense of despondency with his own position. Partly due to his Guild not offering him the hospitality it should, partly due to his advanced age, but also due to his, and other Watchers, complete failure to detect the alien invasion that serves as their raison d’etre, he begins to have an identity crisis. Everything comes to a head when the three visit the Mouth of Truth, a sculpture which legend claims will bite off the hand of anyone who lies when their hand is placed in the mouth.

With Alvuela’s hand in the mouth, Gorman asks about her preference of sexual partners, naming her first lover, the Prince of Roum, and himself. Alvuela gives a nuanced answer which doesn’t fully satisfy Gorman. With his hand in the mouth, the Watcher admits that he sees his life as a waste since the enemy he is vigilant for is imaginary. When the Watcher asks Gorman if he is really who he claims to be, Gorman replies he isn’t. Gorman then, with his hand still in the mouth, claims that he is an advance scout for the “imaginary” invaders the Watchers are looking for.

With the invasion imminent, if Gorman is telling the truth, the Watcher no longer has a purpose, even if the reasons for his disillusionment were proven false. The questioning at the mask alters the dynamic between all the members of the group who must come to terms with their new relationships, even as it appears that the invasion is imminent. The last third of the novella deals with the repercussions of the revelations at the mouth, and even the Watcher’s subsequent success doesn’t change his need to find a place for himself in the world following his experiences.

The story’s title refers to the fact that Avluela’s wings only permit her to fly during the night, leaving her earthbound during the day. It seems a relatively minor point within the context of the novella, and ultimately, Gorman and the Watcher discuss the limitation of her ability, but Silverberg does so in a manner that clearly sets up the first sequel to the story, The Perris Way, which would ultimately become the middle story in the fix-up novel, originally published two months after Nightwings, with the final part, To Jorslem, appearing three months after The Perris Way. The result, however, is that Nightwings does not feel complete without its companion pieces.

The cover for was painted by Mark Ferrari. The cover for The Last Castle was painted by Brian Waugh.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.