"Dinosaur Park" is a loving homage to the works of Jack Vance.
Thousands of years from now, the human race has expanded throughout the galaxy, colonizing millions of worlds and creating myriads of bizarre new religious cults and sects. One of these worlds is Stohlson's Redemption, where the human settlers raise dinosaurs for their religious ceremonies.
When the ten-year-old Kerryl Ryson creates an unseemly incident that upsets a visiting Important Person, his father is fed to a dinosaur -- as an object lesson in politeness -- and his remaining family are sold into slavery. For sixteen years Kerryl has plotted his revenge.
Now, with the aid of a beautiful noblewoman, a time machine, a race of aliens who use the Mesozoic Era of Earth as a setting for adventure videos, and a stampede of ravaging dinosaurs, Kerryl gets his chance to even the interstellar score. But first he has to escape from several death sentences. . . . In fact, he must come back from the dead!
"Space opera took a unique form in the hands of Jack Vance, as he transformed two-fisted swash-buckling to an artistry of pungent, subtle ironies. . . . [Dinosaur Park] is a very faithful effort, chock-a-block with poignant nomenclature, strange lands, and dinosaurs (cf The Dragon Masters), and featuring the requisite grim young hero out for revenge. " --Locus
"This book is a screamingly funny sendup of Jack Vance's writing style by the author of ' Napoleon Disentimed' and the Chap Foey Rider stories in Analog magazine. If you are a Vance fan, do not miss it!" -- Raymond's Reviews
"Of all the writers I discovered during my years as an editor, Hayford Peirce is the most original stylist and undoubtedly the one with the wickedest sense of humor." -- Ben Bova
"Hayford Peirce is debonair, witty, and a keen student of the cosmopolis: all of which is reflected in his writing. He also displays a knack for seizing and holding a reader's attention: certainly he is among the most entertaining of all science-fiction writers." -- Jack Vance
