| Ports of Call | |
| Author: | Jack Vance |
| Cover Artist: | Vladimir Nenov |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Gaean Reach |
| Publisher: | Tom Doherty |
| Release Date: | April 1998 |
| Media Type: | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages: | 294 |
| Isbn: | 0-312-85801-9 |
| Dewey: | 813/.54 21 |
| Congress: | PS3572.A424 P67 1998 |
| Oclc: | 37513050 |
| Followed By: | Lurulu |
Ports of Call is a 1998 science fiction adventure novel by American writer Jack Vance. Followed by the novel Lurulu, it tells the story of a young man named Myron Tany on a picaresque journey through the Gaean Reach.
Myron's family intended for Myron to follow a staid and respectable career in economics; however, when his wealthy and eccentric great-aunt Dame Hester came into possession of a space yacht, Myron suddenly found his long suppressed dreams of adventure within reach. Serving as Dame Hester's nominal captain on her journey to find a clinic reputed to restore lost youth to wealthy clients, Myron soon finds that his aunt is capricious as she is flamboyant, and after an argument, finds himself cast away on a remote planet. With no resources to return home, he obtains the position of supercargo on a tramp freighter, which enables him to travel further across the Gaean Reach to exotic lands.
F&SF reviewer Elizabeth Hand praised Ports of Call as "delightful," declaring that "one enjoys Ports of Call as one does a Restoration comedy, for the sheer outrageous of its characters and the precision of Vance's often lunatic descriptive powers."[1]