Showboat World

Showboat World (original title: The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII, Big Planet) is a science fiction novel by American writer Jack Vance, first published in 1975. It is the second, stand-alone novel in a pair of novels (the first being Big Planet) that share the same setting, a backward, lawless, metal-poor world called Big Planet. The plot structure which involves a series of dramatic presentations, often with humorous consequences, has parallels with Vance's 1965 novel Space Opera.