Comments:

There seem to be significant differences between the serialized version for Galaxy and the later book (I’m looking at the Spatterlight edition now). Most of the first two chapters of the book is missing from the magazine version. I’m guessing Vance added material to the book version, but that’s just a guess.

Also missing from the magazine version are the extensive epigraphs which I found so charming when I first started reading Jack Vance as a teenager. Foreverness writes that Frederik Pohl, who was at that time the editor of Galaxy, had removed them. And moreover, that this cutting disgusted Vance so much that he put off writing the concluding sequels of the Demon Princess series for a long time! (ref)

Quote:

Gersen knocked at the door. There was no response. Gersen knocked again. The door was flung violently open; a sleepy unshaven man peered forth. His age was indeterminate; he was thin, spindle-shanked, with a twisted beak of a nose, rumpled hair of no particular color, eyes which though perfectly set gave the impression of looking in two directions at once. His manner was wild and truculent. “Is there no privacy left in the world? Off the boat, at once. Whenever I settle for a moment’s rest, some sheep-faced functionary, some importunate peddler of tracts insists on pounding me out of my couch. Will you not depart? Have I not made myself clear? I warn you, I have a trick or two up my sleeve …”

Republished as The Palace of Love and in the collection Demon Princes, both Spatterlight, 2012.

The serialized version on the Internet Archive:

• part one
• part two
• part three

Comments:

According to Foreverness Vance wrote the story in Tahiti. (ref)

Nebula Award for Best Novella.
Hugo Award for Best Novelette

Quote:

Castle Hagedorn occupied the crest of a black diorite crag overlooking a wide valley to the south. Larger, more majestic than Janeil, Hagedorn was protected by walls a mile in circumference and three hundred feet tall. The parapets stood a full nine hundred feet above the valley, with towers, turrets and observation eyries rising even higher. Two sides of the crag, at east and west, dropped sheer to the valley. The north and south slopes, a trifle less steep, were terraced and planted with vines, artichokes, pears and pomegranates. An avenue rising from the valley circled the crag and passed through a portal into the central plaza. Opposite stood the great Rotunda, with at either side the tall Houses of the twenty-eight families.

Republished The Last Castle, Spatterlight 2012.

→ The 1966 version at the Internet Archive