Talk:The Last Castle (novella)

Novels: Short story / Sci-fi Mid‑importance

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Expansion[edit]

The article currently says "The author expanded this story into a novel of the same name published in 1973." This is not correct. The story was published under separate covers, but not expanded. It remained at roughly 21,500 words, which is shorter than most thresholds for "novel" status. See Chronological List of Texts from the Vance Integral Edition. See also the ISFDB listing for the story.

I am going to remove the line abut the expansion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.106.89.93 (talk) 05:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This makes me wonder why it got a huga award for best novelette, while it certainly is a novella with this amount (21,500) of words.Narayan (talk) 00:21, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

setting[edit]

Setting is Earth? Been a while since I read it, but I sort of assumed the setting was an alien world (a bit like Dragon Masters).

Also I thought a major theme seemed to be magic vs science - most of the humans believe in magic, the protagonist favours science, uses empirically evidence or experiments to solve problem.Feldercarb (talk) 20:34, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Are you thinking of "The Miracle Workers"? (It's been a long time since I read either, too.) —Tamfang (talk) 22:06, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The setting is explicitly Earth. Humanity left for the stars, but centuries earlier some people returned to repopulate the planet, bringing extraterrestrial servants. Ylee (talk) 03:50, 21 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, yes, it seems I was thinking of "The Miracle Workers"Feldercarb (talk) 02:26, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]