It was bad enough when Henghis Hapthorn, Old Earth's foremost discriminator and die-hard empiricist, had to accept this coming of a new age of magic. Now he no longer has the leisure to anticipate and prepare for the inevitable changes. Hapthorn finds himself cast forward and stranded several centuries in the future. This new world of contending wizards and hungry dragons is a difficult one to assimilate, and Hapthorn must do so without his magic-savvy...

This anthology has assembled distinguished authors to write stories in honor of the genius of Jack Vance, stories using the bizarre and darkly beautiful far future setting of the Dying Earth, near the very end of Earth's lifespan, where mighty wizards duel with spells of dreadful potency under a waning and almost burnt-out red sun, and adventurers and cutpurses strive to hoodwink and out-trick each other in haunted forests full of demons and monsters...