Jack Vance

Jack Vance was an American mystery, fantasy and science fiction author. Vance’s oeuvre spans more 50 novels and 100 short stories. Most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance. He published 11 mysteries as John Holbrook Vance and 3 as Ellery Queen. Other pen names (each used only once) included Alan Wade, Peter Held, John van See, and J A Kavnnes.

Among his awards are: Hugo Awards, in 1963 for The Dragon Masters, in 1967 for The Last Castle, and in 2010 for his memoir This is Me, Jack Vance!; a Nebula Award in 1966, also for The Last Castle; the Jupiter Award in 1975; the World Fantasy Award in 1984 for life achievement and in 1990 for Lyonesse: Madouc; an Edgar (the mystery equivalent of the Nebula) for the best first mystery novel in 1961 for The Man in the Cage; in 1992, he was Guest of Honor at the WorldCon in Orlando, Florida; and in 1997 he was named a SFWA Grand Master. A 2009 profile in the New York Times Magazine described Vance as “one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices.”

Vance’s last novel, the autobiography “This is Me, Jack Vance!”, was released in the summer of 2009. In this book Vance gives us an intimate and fascinating glimpse into his rich and eventful life. Vance calls it “more of a landscape than a self-portrait – or at least a ramble across the landscape that has been my life.”

Jack Vance spent his ‘post-writing’ years making jazz music, he even released an entire jazz-album only two months ago, and kept abreast of what went on in the world (science, politics, general news) with a keen and honest interest in a steady stream of visitors and admirers.

Norma Vance

Jack met Norma Vance in the early 1950s, and they were married shortly thereafter. Norma played a significant role in Jack’s life, providing support and stability throughout his prolific writing career. Norma would type up Jack’s manuscripts, which he wrote in longhand. She was a constant presence and collaborator, ensuring that Jack’s creative output could continue smoothly despite the challenges of his meticulous writing process.

They had one Son, John Vance - who now manages the literary estate of Jack Vance and oversees the publication of his works through Spatterlight Press.

More coming soon about Norma and her role in Jack’s life and work.

Travel

Houseboats

Music

Awards

“Jack Vance receiving the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Related Work for his memoir This is Me, Jack Vance! at Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, Australia.”

VIE (Vance Integral Edition)

In the late 1990s, the Vance Integral Edition (VIE) project was initiated to create a comprehensive and authoritative collection of Jack Vance’s works. This project aimed to restore Vance’s texts to their original form, correcting errors and inconsistencies that had appeared in previous editions. The VIE has become an essential resource for scholars and fans alike, ensuring that Vance’s literary legacy is preserved with the utmost fidelity.

Paul Rhoads was the driving force behind the Vance Integral Edition, overseeing the meticulous process of collating, editing, and restoring Jack Vance’s works to their intended form. His dedication and expertise have been instrumental in ensuring the accuracy and completeness of this comprehensive collection.

Later Years, Eyesight and writing setup

Vance’s eyesight was failing already in the eighties, which made it increasingly difficult for him to read and write.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvuoIpTy4Ks&t=1348s

LEGACY - John Vance & Spatterlight Press

Full Bibliography: First Publications

Every Vance novel, collection, and short story, with first appearance only (magazine, book, or omnibus) and, where a work first appeared serialized in a magazine and only later as a standalone book, both dates. Compiled from references/vance-life-and-works.md (itself sourced from ISFDB, the FictionMags Index, sfadb, and Foreverness — see that file’s §10 for full citations) and cross-checked against ISFDB’s summary bibliography.

Full chronological list — fiction and non-fiction

Every Vance novel, short story, collection, and his one non-fiction book (the autobiography), in a single sequence sorted by earliest identifiable first-publication date (magazine/anthology serialization where it preceded book publication, otherwise the book date). Compiled from VIE.md and references/vance-life-and-works.md (ISFDB/FictionMags Index/sfadb/Foreverness) plus the 2018 Spatterlight addendum. Collections and omnibuses are dated to their own first edition, not to the stories they reprint.

The Genesee Slough Murders was added to the 2018 Spatterlight Wild Thyme and Violets and Other Unpublished Works, not the original VIE volume. The Telephone Was Ringing in the Dark was published only by the Vance Integral Edition. This list reflects the VIE’s own claim to completeness (plus the 2018 Spatterlight addendum) — the fullest single accounting of Vance’s output available without a story-by-story ISFDB pass. If a title turns up that isn’t here, treat that as a gap to log, not as evidence the list is wrong.

Open questions / next steps for this page

• ISBNs were removed from this page (2026-08-21, at the user’s request) to keep the table focused on first-publication venues/dates. If ISBNs are wanted again later, references/vance-life-and-works.md and the Subterranean Press “Early Jack Vance” series copyright pages are the fastest starting points (978-1596063013, 978-1596064515, 978-1596065604, 978-1596066458, 978-1596067103 for vols. 1–5 respectively); everything else would need a fresh ISFDB/WorldCat pass.
• VIE vs. commercial first editions: this page tracks commercial first publications only. For the VIE’s own restored/authorial texts and their relationship to first commercial editions, see VIE.md.
• Coverage is complete per the VIE’s own record (2026-08-21 pass, ~160 items across novels, short fiction, collections, and the autobiography, drawn from VIE.md’s per-volume contents plus the 2018 Spatterlight addendum). Treat as complete unless a title turns up that isn’t here; it has not been independently re-verified against ISFDB’s chronological title list item-by-item.

2009 This Is Me, Jack Vance! (2009)

This Is Me, Jack Vance! is the only non-fiction work by Vance, and it won the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Related Book.

Jack’s autobiography provides an intimate and fascinating glimpse into his rich and eventful life, offering readers a unique perspective on the man behind the celebrated works. It’s also his last published work, he no longer used his computer setup but dictated his memoirs. Jeremy Cavaterra (Jack’s caretaker), transcribed the dictated memoirs into the final published form (Norma sadly passed away before the book was completed).

There are two additional noteworhthy books released that give more insight into Jack’s life and works: About Jack Vance and Jack Vance Interviews both by Jean Luc Esteban, available on lulu.com

2004 Lurulu

1998 Ports of Call

Ports of call was intended as a 2-volume series, Lurulu was released as the second volume in 2004. This was also the last (fiction) novel by Vance to be published during his lifetime, and the last to get the luxury Underwood Books treatment.

Additional information about the writing of Ports of Call can be found in the companion book “Backstage with Jack Vance” by Spatterlight Press. It contains a lot of information about the writing of Ports of Call, including the outline of the novel, some background stories, and details that didn’t make it into the final book.

1996 Night Lamp

Night Lamp is the first novel by Vance to be published in hardcover by a major trade publisher (Tor), and the first to be published in hardcover since 1979’s The Face. It was originally published in a limited edition of 600 signed copies by Underwood Books, with cover art by Stephen Hickman.

Spatterlight Press has released a companion book called “Backstage with Jack Vance” which contains a lot of information about the writing of Night Lamp. It’s the outline of Night Lamp, it gives an insight into the writing of the novel, some background stories, names of characters have been changed - some details from the outline didn’t make it into the novel, it is a very interesting read for anyone who is interested in the writing process of Jack Vance.

xxxx Big Planet (1952)

Cosmopolis 25 has a very interesting article about the history of the publication of Big Planet, and the differences between the original magazine version and the later book version. The article is called “Big Planet, Big Scissors…” by Patrick Dusoulier

Most of you, dear Readers, are under the impression that you have read Big Planet, a novel written by Jack Vance, as published by ACE in 1957.

1952 Gold and Iron (1952)

VIE edition is missing the few paragraphs (as appeared in the “space Stories” and “Underwood-Miller” books) - the Spatterlight edition has the complete text.

The Vance Integral Edition: Volumes in Chronological Release Order

The Vance Integral Edition (VIE) was published as a fixed 44-volume set (plus two earlier promotional volumes) between 2001 and 2006. It was not released all at once: two sample/promotional volumes appeared first, then the bulk of the set arrived to subscribers in two large “waves,” and one further volume was issued afterward to replace content withdrawn for rights reasons. The list below gives every VIE book in that real-world release order — not the reading/writing order encoded in the volume numbers themselves (for that, see the 1–44 sequence noted alongside each entry).

The VIE was officially incorporated on January 15th, 2001, as a nonprofit corporation in the state of California.

Who led it: The project was conceived and led by Paul Rhoads (an American painter living in France), who served as editor-in-chief. The actual incorporated officers, were: • John Vance II (Jack’s son) — President • Paul Rhoads — Vice President • Norma Vance — Secretary • Ed Winskill — Treasurer • Mike Berro — board member (credited elsewhere as the person who first launched the VIE idea)

VIE: The Vance Integral Edition is the official site for the project, with a full set of bibliographic and textual information on every volume, including story-level first-publication data. The site also hosts a complete archive of the VIE’s original web content, including the original “VIE Notes” essays and other editorial apparatus.

NOTE: The restoration of Vance’s authorial texts in the VIE is a major scholarly achievement, the restored texts are the definitive versions of Vance’s work, and the VIE is the only edition that presents them all together. The VIE is a limited-edition set, and it is no longer in print. The VIE is not a “fan project” — it was a professional publishing effort with a nonprofit corporate structure, and it was produced with the full cooperation of Jack Vance and his family.

People that want to buy the VIE should be aware that the set is no longer in print, and that any copies for sale are likely to be expensive. Lucklily Spatterlight Press has reprinted the VIE in a new edition, which is available for purchase. See SpatterlightPress.md for details. Same for ebooks (amazon.com, etc.) — the VIE is no longer available in ebook form, but Spatterlight Press has reissued the VIE as a new ebook edition.

2001 — Promotional volume

Released ahead of the main set as a sample/introduction to the edition.

• Vol. i — Coup de Grace and Other Stories (“The Gift Volume”)

2002 — Promotional volume and Wave 1

A second promotional volume, followed by the first wave of the main set, delivered to subscribers in spring 2003.

• Vol. ii — The Languages of Pao and The Dragon Masters (“The Science Fiction Volume”)
• Vol. 1 — Mazirian the Magician
• Vol. 4 — The Rapparee / Big Planet / Vandals of the Void
• Vol. 6 — Golden Girl and Other Stories
• Vol. 7 — Gold and Iron / Clarges / The Languages of Pao
• Vol. 9 — The Miracle Workers / The Dragon Masters / The Last Castle
• Vol. 10 — The Flesh Mask / Strange People, Queer Notions / Bird Island
• Vol. 11 — The House on Lily Street / The View from Chickweed’s Window
• Vol. 12 — Bad Ronald / The Dark Ocean
• Vol. 17 — The Moon Moth and Other Stories
• Vol. 20 — Emphyrio
• Vol. 25 — The Face
• Vol. 26 — The Book of Dreams
• Vol. 28 — The Domains of Koryphon
• Vol. 29 — Trullion: Alastor 2262
• Vol. 30 — Marune: Alastor 933
• Vol. 31 — Wyst: Alastor 1716
• Vol. 36 — Suldrun’s Garden
• Vol. 37 — The Green Pearl
• Vol. 38 — Madouc
• Vol. 39 — Araminta Station
• Vol. 40 — Ecce and Old Earth
• Vol. 42 — Night Lamp

2005 — Wave 2

The remaining volumes of the set, completing delivery to subscribers.

• Vol. 2 — The World-Thinker and Other Stories
• Vol. 3 — Gadget Stories
• Vol. 5 — Son of the Tree and Other Stories
• Vol. 8 — The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories
• Vol. 13 — The Fox Valley Murders / The Pleasant Grove Murders
• Vol. 14 — The Man in the Cage / The Deadly Isles
• Vol. 15 — Cugel the Clever
• Vol. 16 — The Blue World
• Vol. 18 — Space Opera
• Vol. 19 — The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet
• Vol. 21 — Tschai
• Vol. 22 — The Star King
• Vol. 23 — The Killing Machine
• Vol. 24 — The Palace of Love
• Vol. 27 — Durdane
• Vol. 32 — The Dogtown Tourist Agency and Freitzke’s Turn
• Vol. 33 — Maske: Thaery
• Vol. 34 — Rhialto the Marvellous
• Vol. 35 — Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight
• Vol. 41 — Throy
• Vol. 43 — Ports of Call
• Vol. 44 — Wild Thyme and Violets, Other Unpublished Works and Addenda

2006 — Supplementary volume

Issued after the main set. The original Vol. 14 grouping had included the three Ellery Queen house-name mysteries; rights complications over the Queen pseudonym required withdrawing that content, so a replacement volume was produced from Vance’s own manuscripts under his intended, non-Queen titles.

• Vol. 14 bis — Strange She Hasn’t Written / Death of a Solitary Chess Player / The Man Who Walks Behind (authorial texts replacing the withdrawn Ellery Queen versions of The Four Johns, A Room to Die In, and The Madman Theory)

Notes

• The VIE set is 44 numbered volumes; volumes i and ii are earlier promotional/sample publications outside that numbering, reissuing material later folded into or duplicated by the numbered set. Vol. 14 bis is likewise outside the 1–44 numbering, issued to complete Vol. 14 after the Ellery Queen withdrawal.
• Release dates for individual volumes within Wave 1 and Wave 2 are not independently documented; volumes are listed by ascending volume number within each wave. See references/local-archive.md and references/vance-life-and-works.md in the vance-doctorate-analysis skill for sourced detail on VIE textual history, and Foreverness (integralarchive.org) for the primary project record.

Volume Contents: First Publication and Alternate Titles

Every VIE volume is a facsimile of the authorial text under Vance’s own preferred title. Many of these titles differ from the title under which the piece first reached print — magazines and book editors routinely renamed Vance’s work. The lists below give, for every story, novella, and novel inside each volume: the VIE/authorial title; any other title(s) it was published or is commonly known under; and its first publication (magazine/anthology/book and date, with publisher for book-original work). Where a title had no prior periodical appearance and was original to a book, that book is given as the first publication. Uncredited apparatus (indexes, credits lists, essays) in Vol. 44 is noted but not tabulated as fiction.

Vol. i — Coup de Grace and Other Stories (“The Gift Volume”, 2001)

A promotional sampler assembled before the numbered set; its fiction content overlaps numbered volumes below (notably “Coup de Grace,” collected in Vol. 17) rather than introducing unique first-publication data.

Vol. ii — The Languages of Pao and The Dragon Masters (“The Science Fiction Volume”, 2002)

A second promotional sampler pairing two already-scheduled numbered-volume contents (Vol. 7 and Vol. 9 below); see those volumes for first-publication data.

Vol. 1 — Mazirian the Magician

All six stories were written for and first published together in The Dying Earth, Hillman Periodicals, 1950 (paperback #41) — none had a prior magazine appearance. The book’s editorial title, The Dying Earth, is used for the whole cycle; Vance’s preferred title is Mazirian the Magician.

• Turjan of Miir — first published in The Dying Earth, Hillman Periodicals, 1950.
• Mazirian the Magician — first published in The Dying Earth, Hillman Periodicals, 1950.
• T’sais — first published in The Dying Earth, Hillman Periodicals, 1950.
• Liane the Wayfarer (also published as “The Loom of Darkness”, Worlds Beyond, December 1950) — first published in The Dying Earth, Hillman Periodicals, 1950.
• Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream (also as “Ulan Dhor”) — first published in The Dying Earth, Hillman Periodicals, 1950.
• Guyal of Sfere — first published in The Dying Earth, Hillman Periodicals, 1950. (A revised version appears separately in Vol. 44.)

Vol. 2 — The World-Thinker and Other Stories

• The World-Thinker — Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1945.
• I’ll Build Your Dream Castle — Astounding Science Fiction, September 1947.
• The Ten Books (published as “Men of the Ten Books”) — Startling Stories, March 1951.
• The God and the Temple Robber (published as “Temple of Han”) — Planet Stories, July 1951.
• Telek — Astounding Science Fiction, January 1952.
• Noise — Startling Stories, August 1952.
• Seven Exits from Bocz — The Rhodomagnetic Digest, Volume IV, issue #21, number 2, 1952.
• DP! — Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, April 1953.
• The Absent-Minded Professor (published as “First Star I See Tonight”, under the pseudonym John Van See; later reprinted as “Murder Observed”) — Malcolm’s Mystery Magazine, March 1954.
• The Devil on Salvation Bluff — Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, January 1955.
• The Phantom Milkman — Other Worlds Science Stories #15, February 1956.
• Where Hesperus Falls — Fantastic Universe, October 1956.
• A Practical Man’s Guide — Space Science Fiction Magazine, August 1957.
• The House Lords — Saturn, Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, October 1957.
• The Secret — Impulse, March 1966.

Vol. 3 — Gadget Stories

• Planet of the Black Dust (Alternate title “Planet of the Red Star”)— Startling Stories, Summer 1946.
• Dead Ahead (published as “Ultimate Quest”, under the pseudonym John Holbrook) — Super Science Stories, September 1950.
• Hard Luck Diggings [Magnus Ridolph] — Startling Stories, July 1948.
• Sanatoris Short-Cut [Magnus Ridolph] — Startling Stories, September 1948.
• The Unspeakable McInch [Magnus Ridolph] — Startling Stories, November 1948.
• The Howling Bounders [Magnus Ridolph] — Startling Stories, March 1949.
• The King of Thieves [Magnus Ridolph] — Startling Stories, November 1949.
• The Sub-Standard Sardines [Magnus Ridolph] (The Case of the Sub-standard Sardines (a.k.a.) and The Sub-standard Sardines (a.k.a.)) — Startling Stories, January 1949.
• To B or Not to C or to D (published as “Cosmic Hotfoot”) [Magnus Ridolph] — Startling Stories, September 1950.
• The Spa of the Stars [Magnus Ridolph] — Startling Stories, July 1950.
• The Enchanted Princess (later reprinted as “The Dreamer”, Alternate title “The Enchanted Princess and Roger Atkin”) — Orbit, v1 #5, 1954.
• The Potters of Firsk — Astounding Science Fiction, May 1950.
• The Visitors (published as “Winner Lose All”) — Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1951.
• The Uninhibited Robot (published as “The Plagian Siphon”, Alternate title “The Planet Machine”) — Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1951.
• Dover Spargill’s Ghastly Floater — Marvel Science Fiction, November 1951.
• Sabotage on Sulfur Planet — Startling Stories, June 1952.
• Three-Legged Joe — Startling Stories, January 1953.
• Four Hundred Blackbirds — Future Science Fiction, July 1953.
• Sjambak — If, July 1953.
• Parapsyche — Amazing Science Fiction Stories, August 1958. (Not to be confused with “Coup de Grace,” which was itself first published under the title “Worlds of Origin” — see Vol. 17.)
• Sail 25 (published as “Gateway to Strangeness”; later reprinted as “Dust of Far Suns”) — Amazing Stories, August 1962.

Vol. 4 — The Rapparee / Big Planet / Vandals of the Void

• The Rapparee (published as “The Five Gold Bands”; also as “The Space Pirate”) — Startling Stories, November 1950.
• Big Planet — Startling Stories, September 1952 (magazine text cut nearly in half at the editor’s request; the excised material is lost). First full-length book publication: Avalon Books, 1957.
• Vandals of the Void — first published as a book (juvenile SF, no prior serialization): The John C. Winston Company, 1953.

Vol. 5 — Son of the Tree and Other Stories

• Phalid’s Fate — Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1946.
• Chateau d’If (published as “New Bodies for Old”) — Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1950.
• Crusade to Maxus (published as “Overlords of Maxus”, Call for the New Crusade (Draft Title), Crazy Crusade (Draft Title), Crusade to Alambar (Draft Title) , New Crusade, The (Draft Title)) — Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1951.
• Son of the Tree — Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1951.
• Shape-Up — Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy, November 1953.
• The Augmented Agent (published as “I-C-a-BeM”) — Amazing Stories, October 1961.
• Milton Hack from Zodiac (published as “The Man from Zodiac”, Phronus-Sabo Contract (Draft Title)) — Amazing Stories, August 1967.

Vol. 6 — Golden Girl and Other Stories

• Golden Girl Shipwreck on Matemba (Draft Title) — Marvel Science Stories, May 1951.
• Masquerade on Dicantropus — Startling Stories, September 1951.
• Abercrombie Station [Jean Parlier] (Monsters in Orbit, a.k.a.) — Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1952.
• Cholwell’s Chickens [Jean Parlier] — Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1952.
• The Mitr — Vortex Science Fiction, v1 #1, 1953.
• The World Between (published as “Ecological Onslaught”) — Future Science Fiction, May 1953.
• When the Five Moons Rise — Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy, March 1954.
• Meet Miss Universe — Fantastic Universe, March 1955.
• The Insufferable Red-Headed Daughter of Commander Tynnott, O.T.E. (published as “Assault on a City”; Hugo, Locus, and Jupiter Award finalist) — Universe 4, ed. Terry Carr, Random House, 1974.

Vol. 7 — Gold and Iron / Clarges / The Languages of Pao

• Gold and Iron (published as “Slaves of the Klau”; magazine text as “Planet of the Damned”) — Space Stories, December 1952 (abridged); Ace Books, 1958 (book).
• Clarges (published as “To Live Forever”) — Ballantine Books, 1956 (book original; no prior serialization).
• The Languages of Pao — Satellite Science Fiction, December 1957; Avalon Books, 1958 (book).

Vol. 8 — The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories

• The Houses of Iszm — Startling Stories, Spring 1954.
• The Gift of Gab — Astounding Science Fiction, September 1955.
• Nopalgarth (published as “The Brains of Earth”) — Ace Books, 1966 (book original; no prior serialization).
• The Narrow Land — Fantastic, July 1967. Alternate title: “Clutch of the Careless One-Woman” (Draft Title).

Vol. 9 — The Miracle Workers / The Dragon Masters / The Last Castle

• The Miracle Workers — Astounding Science Fiction, July 1958.
• The Dragon Masters (Hugo Award, Best Short Fiction, 1963) — Galaxy Magazine, August 1962.
• The Last Castle (Nebula Award 1966; Hugo Award 1967) — Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1966.

Vol. 10 — The Flesh Mask / Strange People, Queer Notions / Bird Island

• The Flesh Mask (published as “Take My Face”, under the editorial pseudonym Peter Held) — Mystery House, 1957.
• Strange People, Queer Notions (published as “Strange Notions”) — Underwood-Miller, 1985 (Vance’s most delayed mystery to reach print).
• Bird Island (published as “Isle of Peril”, under the editorial pseudonym Alan Wade; also as “Bird Isle”; draft title “Forbidden Island”) — Mystery House, 1957.

Vol. 11 — The House on Lily Street / The View from Chickweed’s Window

• The House on Lily Street — Underwood-Miller, 1979.
• The View from Chickweed’s Window — Underwood-Miller, 1978.

Vol. 12 — Bad Ronald / The Dark Ocean

• Bad Ronald (draft title “Something Awful”; published as by John Holbrook Vance; filmed for ABC television 1974 and as Méchant garçon, France, 1992) — Ballantine Books, 1973.
• The Dark Ocean — Underwood-Miller, 1985.

Vol. 13 — The Fox Valley Murders / The Pleasant Grove Murders

• The Fox Valley Murders [Sheriff Joe Bain] (published as by John Holbrook Vance) — Bobbs-Merrill, 1966.
• The Pleasant Grove Murders [Sheriff Joe Bain] (published as by John Holbrook Vance) — Bobbs-Merrill, 1967.

Vol. 14 — The Man in the Cage / The Deadly Isles

• The Man in the Cage (Edgar Award, Best First Novel, 1961; published as by John Holbrook Vance) — Random House, 1960. (Draft Title: “No-one knows where he went”.)
• The Deadly Isles (published as by John Holbrook Vance) — Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.
• The Genesee Slough Murders (Outline for a novel, never completed; published as by John Holbrook Vance) — The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1960. (FACT CHECK?)

Vol. 14 bis — Strange She Hasn’t Written / Death of a Solitary Chess Player / The Man Who Walks Behind

These are Vance’s own authorial texts of the three Ellery Queen house-name mysteries, restored decades later from manuscript fragments found on the reverse of other typescripts; the editorially “tarted up” Ellery Queen versions remain separately in print under their own titles.

• Strange She Hasn’t Written (published as “The Four Johns”, house name Ellery Queen; UK as “Four Men Called John”) — Pocket Books, 1964.
• Death of a Solitary Chess Player (published as “A Room to Die In”, house name Ellery Queen) — Pocket Books, 1965.
• The Man Who Walks Behind (published as “The Madman Theory”, house name Ellery Queen) — Pocket Books, 1966.

Vol. 15 — Cugel the Clever (author’s title for The Eyes of the Overworld)

• The Overworld [Cugel; Dying Earth] — The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1965.
• Cil [Cugel; Dying Earth] — no prior magazine appearance; first published in The Eyes of the Overworld, Ace Books, 1966.
• The Mountains of Magnatz [Cugel; Dying Earth] — F&SF, February 1966.
• The Sorcerer Pharesm [Cugel; Dying Earth] — F&SF, April 1966.
• The Pilgrims [Cugel; Dying Earth] — F&SF, June 1966.
• The Cave in the Forest and The Manse of Iucounu [Cugel; Dying Earth] — both first published together as “The Manse of Iucounu,” F&SF, July 1966; later divided into two chapters/stories for the VIE text.

Vol. 16 — The Blue World

• The Blue World (draft title “King Kragen”) — Ballantine Books, 1966 (book original; expanded from the novella “The Kragen,” Fantastic Stories of Imagination, July 1964 — see also Vol. 44).

Vol. 17 — The Moon Moth and Other Stories

• The Kokod Warriors [Magnus Ridolph] — Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1952.
• The New Prime (published as “Brain of the Galaxy”) — Worlds Beyond, February 1951.
• The Men Return — Infinity Science Fiction, July 1957.
• Ullward’s Retreat — Galaxy Magazine, December 1958.
• Coup de Grace (published as “Worlds of Origin”) [Magnus Ridolph] — Super-Science Fiction, February 1958.
• Dodkin’s Job — Astounding Science Fiction, October 1959.
• The Moon Moth — Galaxy Magazine, August 1961.
• Green Magic — F&SF, June 1963.
• Alfred’s Ark (draft title “Alfred”) — New Worlds SF #150, May 1965.
• Sulwen’s Planet (draft title “A Canceling of Unknowns”) — The Farthest Reaches, ed. Joseph Elder, Trident Press, August 1968.
• Rumfuddle — Three Trips in Time and Space, ed. Robert Silverberg, Hawthorn Books, January 1973.

Vol. 18 — Space Opera

• Space Opera — Pyramid Publications, 1965 (book original; no prior serialization found).

Vol. 19 — The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet

• (published as “Showboat World”) — Pyramid Publications, 1975 (book original; retroactively conceived sequel to Big Planet).

Vol. 20 — Emphyrio

• Emphyrio — Fantastic, June and August 1969 (2 parts); Doubleday, 1969 (book).

Vol. 21 — Tschai

All four Planet of Adventure novels were Ace paperback originals with no prior magazine serialization.

• The Chasch (published as “City of the Chasch”) — Ace Books, 1968.
• The Wannek (published as “Servants of the Wankh”; later reissued as “Wankh”) — Ace Books, 1969.
• The Dirdir — Ace Books, 1969.
• The Pnume — Ace Books, 1970.

Vol. 22 — The Star King [Kirth Gersen; Demon Princes]

• The Star King — Galaxy Magazine, December 1963 and February 1964 (2 parts); Berkley Publishing, 1964 (book).

Vol. 23 — The Killing Machine [Kirth Gersen; Demon Princes]

• The Killing Machine — Berkley Publishing, 1964 (book original; no prior serialization found).

Vol. 24 — The Palace of Love [Kirth Gersen; Demon Princes]

• The Palace of Love — Galaxy Science Fiction, October and December 1966, February 1967 (3 parts); Berkley Publishing, 1967 (book).

Vol. 25 — The Face [Kirth Gersen; Demon Princes]

• The Face — DAW Books, 1979 (book original; no prior serialization).

Vol. 26 — The Book of Dreams [Kirth Gersen; Demon Princes]

• The Book of Dreams — DAW Books, 1981 (book original; no prior serialization).

Vol. 27 — Durdane

• The Anome (published as “The Faceless Man”) — F&SF, February and March 1971 (2 parts); Dell, 1973 (book).
• The Brave Free Men (draft title “Palasedra”) — F&SF, July and August 1972 (2 parts); Dell, 1973 (book).
• The Asutra — F&SF, May and June 1973 (2 parts); Dell, 1974 (book).

Vol. 28 — The Domains of Koryphon [Gaean Reach]

• (published as “The Gray Prince”; also “The Grey Prince”) — Amazing Science Fiction Stories, August and October 1974 (2 parts); Bobbs-Merrill, 1974 (book).

Vol. 29 — Trullion: Alastor 2262 [Gaean Reach]

• Trullion: Alastor 2262 — Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March and June 1973 (2 parts); Ballantine Books, 1973 (book).

Vol. 30 — Marune: Alastor 933 [Gaean Reach]

• Marune: Alastor 933 — Amazing Science Fiction Stories, July and September 1975 (2 parts); Ballantine Books, 1975 (book).

Vol. 31 — Wyst: Alastor 1716 [Gaean Reach]

• Wyst: Alastor 1716 — DAW Books, 1978 (book original; no prior serialization found).

Vol. 32 — The Dogtown Tourist Agency and Freitzke’s Turn [Miro Hetzel]

Collected together under the editorial title Galactic Effectuator (Underwood-Miller, 1980); the VIE restores the two novellas separately under this volume title.

• The Dogtown Tourist Agency — Epoch, ed. Roger Elwood & Robert Silverberg, Berkley/Putnam, 1975.
• Freitzke’s Turn — Triax, ed. Robert Silverberg, Pinnacle Books, 1977.

Vol. 33 — Maske: Thaery

• Maske: Thaery — Berkley Publishing, 1976 (book original; no prior serialization found).

Vol. 34 — Rhialto the Marvellous [Dying Earth]

First collected as a trio (“two new and one revised”) in the Brandywyne Books limited edition.

• The Murthe — first published in Rhialto the Marvellous, Brandywyne Books, August 1984.
• Fader’s Waft — first published in Rhialto the Marvellous, Brandywyne Books, August 1984.
• Morreion — Flashing Swords! #1, ed. Lin Carter, Science Fiction Book Club, April 1973 (revised for the VIE text).

Vol. 35 — Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight [Dying Earth]

Author’s title for the editorially named Cugel’s Saga; a fix-up of two previously published novellas plus new connective material.

• The Seventeen Virgins [Cugel; Dying Earth] (Jupiter Award, 1975) — F&SF, October 1974.
• The Bagful of Dreams [Cugel; Dying Earth] — Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians, ed. Lin Carter, Dell, 1977.
• Connective and framing material original to Cugel’s Saga, Timescape/Pocket Books, 1983 (book).

Vol. 36 — Suldrun’s Garden [Lyonesse]

• (published as “Lyonesse: Suldrun’s Garden”; also as “Lyonesse”) — Berkley Books, 1983 (book original; no prior serialization).

Vol. 37 — The Green Pearl [Lyonesse]

• (published as “Lyonesse II: The Green Pearl”) — Underwood-Miller, 1985 (book original; no prior serialization). Mass-market edition as “The Green Pearl,” Berkley Books, 1986.

Vol. 38 — Madouc [Lyonesse]

• (published as “Lyonesse: Madouc”; World Fantasy Award, Best Novel, 1990) — Underwood-Miller, 1989 (book original; no prior serialization). Mass-market edition as “Madouc,” Ace Books, 1990.

Vol. 39 — Araminta Station [Cadwal Chronicles]

• Araminta Station — Underwood-Miller, 1987 (book original; no prior serialization). Mass-market paperback, Tor Books, 1988.

Vol. 40 — Ecce and Old Earth [Cadwal Chronicles]

• Ecce and Old Earth — Underwood-Miller, 1991 (book original; no prior serialization). Tor Books paperback edition followed.

Vol. 41 — Throy [Cadwal Chronicles]

• Throy — Underwood-Miller, 1992 (book original; no prior serialization).

Vol. 42 — Night Lamp

• Night Lamp — Tor Books, 1996 (book original; no prior serialization).

Vol. 43 — Ports of Call

• Ports of Call — Tor Books, 1998 (book original; no prior serialization).
• Lurulu — Tor Books, 2004 (book original; no prior serialization; completes the single multi-part novel begun with Ports of Call).

Vol. 44 — Wild Thyme and Violets, Other Unpublished Works and Addenda

• Cat Island (excerpt: first chapter and outline of an unfinished novel, written 1946) — first published in Light from a Lone Star, NESFA Press, August 1985.
• The Stark: The Voyage and the People (unfinished ms., an outline for an unwritten SF novel) — first published in this VIE volume, 2005.
• Dream Castle (revised version of “I’ll Build Your Dream Castle,” Astounding, September 1947 — see Vol. 2) — the revision first published under the title “Dream Castle” in Lost Moons, Underwood-Miller, June 1982.
• The Kragen [Dying Earth-adjacent; source novella for The Blue World, Vol. 16] — Fantastic Stories of Imagination, July 1964.
• The Telephone Was Ringing in the Dark (unfinished suspense novel ms.) — first published in this VIE volume, 2005.
• Guyal of Sfere (revised version; original 1950 text in Vol. 1) — this revised text first published in this VIE volume, 2005.
• The Magnificent Red-Hot Jazzing Seven (concept and synopsis for an unproduced screenplay) — first published in this VIE volume, 2005.
• Wild Thyme and Violets (outline for an unwritten gothic novel) — first published in this VIE volume, 2005.
• Clang (concept and synopsis for an unfinished screenplay, 1981) — first published in this VIE volume, 2005.
• Also included: “Chronological List of VIE Titles,” Vance’s own introductions/forewords/afterwords, essays by Tim Stretton and Alan Hughes on the VIE’s history and textual methods, volunteer and text credits, and the “Catalogue of Titles” — reference apparatus rather than fiction, not tabulated here.

Note on a later, non-VIE edition: Spatterlight Press’s 2018 trade paperback Wild Thyme and Violets and Other Unpublished Works revises this collection, dropping the VIE-specific apparatus and adding “The Genesee Slough Murders” (an outline for the unwritten third Sheriff Joe Bain novel, first published in The Work of Jack Vance by Jerry Hewett & Daryl F. Mallett, Underwood-Miller, 1994) — that story is not part of the original 2005 VIE Vol. 44.

Underwood-Miller: Publications in Chronological Order

Underwood-Miller was a San Francisco/Columbia, PA specialty small press founded in 1976 by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller. Its first book was a first hardcover edition of The Dying Earth — Vance became “the author most identified with the press,” and over the next eighteen years Underwood-Miller produced the first hardcover (and in several cases first-ever book) editions of a large share of Vance’s back catalog, plus several reference works about him. The partnership dissolved in 1994; its last book was a second reprint of The Dying Earth, closing the circle back to its first. Tim Underwood then founded a separate solo imprint, Underwood Books (Grass Valley/Nevada City, CA) — primarily an art-book publisher, but responsible for one significant later Vance title; see that section below. Chuck Miller does not appear to have continued publishing Vance titles solo after 1994.

1976

The press’s debut title.

• The Dying Earth — 1st hardcover ed. of the 1950 story-cycle

1977

• Fantasy and Science Fiction by Jack Vance (Tim Underwood & Chuck Miller) — bibliography chapbook

1978

• The Eyes of the Overworld — 1st hardcover ed. (Cugel the Clever/Dying Earth #2)
• Big Planet — 1st hardcover ed.
• Fantasms: A Bibliography of the Literature of Jack Vance (Daniel J. H. Levack & Tim Underwood) — bibliography; placed 5th, Best Reference Book, 1979 Locus Awards
• The View from Chickweed’s Window — 1st book ed. of this mystery, as “John Holbrook Vance”

1979

Underwood-Miller’s busiest year, spanning Planet of Adventure, Dying Earth chapbooks, and two mystery firsts.

• The House on Lily Street — 1st book ed. of this mystery, as “John Holbrook Vance”
• City of the Chasch — 1st hardcover ed. (Planet of Adventure #1)
• The Seventeen Virgins — chapbook (Cugel/Dying Earth novella)
• The Bagful of Dreams — chapbook (Cugel/Dying Earth novella)
• The Languages of Pao — 1st hardcover ed.
• The Blue World — 1st hardcover ed.
• Green Magic: The Fantasy Realms of Jack Vance — collection
• Morreion: A Tale of the Dying Earth — chapbook (Rhialto/Dying Earth novella, later revised for the 1984 Rhialto the Marvellous)
• Fantasms II: A Bibliography of the Works of Jack Vance (Levack, Underwood & Kurt Cockrum) — revised bibliography, published by K. Cockrum rather than under the Underwood-Miller imprint itself

1980

• Servants of the Wankh — 1st hardcover ed. (Planet of Adventure #2)
• The Dirdir — 1st hardcover ed. (Planet of Adventure #3)
• The Face — 1st hardcover ed. (Demon Princes #4)
• Galactic Effectuator — collection (the Miro Hetzel novellas)
• The Last Castle — standalone illustrated chapbook of the 1966 Hugo/Nebula novella
• Jack Vance (ed. Underwood & Miller) — critical essay anthology, Taplinger’s “Writers of the 21st Century” series; published by Taplinger, not under the Underwood-Miller imprint

1981

• The Pnume — 1st hardcover ed. (Planet of Adventure #4)
• The Book of Dreams — 1st hardcover ed. (Demon Princes #5)
• The Star King — hardcover reissue (Demon Princes #1; first pub. Galaxy 1963–64/Berkley 1964)
• The Killing Machine — hardcover reissue (Demon Princes #2)
• The Palace of Love — hardcover reissue (Demon Princes #3)

1982

• Gold and Iron — hardcover reissue under Vance’s preferred title (= Slaves of the Klau/Planet of the Damned, first pub. 1952/1958)
• Lost Moons — collection gathering several previously uncollected early stories
• Bad Ronald — hardcover ed. of this mystery

1983

A year dominated by reissues — the Durdane trilogy in a matching slipcased set, plus several chapbooks and mysteries.

• The Houses of Iszm — chapbook, 700 copies
• Son of the Tree — chapbook
• The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet — 1st hardcover ed. under this author-preferred title (= Showboat World, Pyramid 1975; Big Planet #2)
• The Man in the Cage — hardcover reissue of the Edgar-winning mystery (first pub. Random House 1960)
• The Faceless Man — hardcover reissue (= The Anome, Durdane #1), slipcased with the two below
• The Brave Free Men — hardcover reissue (Durdane #2)
• The Asutra — hardcover reissue (Durdane #3)
• Suldrun’s Garden: Lyonesse I — hardcover ed.; most bibliographies credit Berkeley Books’ 1983 mass-market paperback as the true first book edition, so this U-M hardcover’s exact status (parallel edition vs. a listing error) is unresolved

1984

• Space Opera — hardcover reissue (first pub. Pyramid 1965)
• Cugel’s Saga — 1st hardcover ed. (Dying Earth #3; the first-ever book publication was Timescape/Pocket Books’ 1983 mass-market paperback). Sources disagree on the U-M edition’s exact date, giving either 1983 or May 1984.
• Trullion: Alastor 2262 — hardcover reissue (Alastor #1)
• Marune: Alastor 933 — hardcover reissue (Alastor #2)
• Wyst: Alastor 1716 — hardcover reissue (Alastor #3)
• Rhialto the Marvellous — Dying Earth #4; published under the Brandywyne Books imprint (Underwood-Miller’s separate, all-genre limited-editions line launched with Waldenbooks in the mid-1980s), not “Underwood-Miller” proper

1985

• The Complete Magnus Ridolph — collection of the Magnus Ridolph stories; sources disagree on the exact date, giving either 1984 or January 1985
• The Green Pearl: Lyonesse II — book-original 1st ed.
• Strange Notions — 1st book ed. (= Strange People, Queer Notions, Vance’s most-delayed mystery to reach print)
• The Dark Ocean — 1st book ed. of this mystery, issued in a shared slipcase with Strange Notions

1986

• The Augmented Agent and Other Stories — collection
• The Dark Side of the Moon — collection, 14 stories plus an author’s introduction

1987

• Araminta Station — book-original 1st ed. (Cadwal Chronicles #1)

1988

• Bird Isle — 1st book ed. under this author-preferred title (= Isle of Peril), usually sold as a 2-volume signed/boxed set with the title below
• Take My Face — hardcover ed. (= The Flesh Mask)

1989

• Madouc: Lyonesse III — book-original 1st ed.; World Fantasy Award, Best Novel, 1990

1990

• Chateau d’If and Other Stories — collection

1991

• Ecce and Old Earth — book-original 1st ed. (Cadwal Chronicles #2)

1992

• Throy — book-original 1st ed. (Cadwal Chronicles #3)
• When the Five Moons Rise — collection
• The Jack Vance Lexicon: From Ahulph to Zipangote (ed. Dan Temianka) — a glossary of Vance’s invented/coined vocabulary

1993

• The Five Gold Bands — hardcover reissue (= The Space Pirate/The Rapparee, first pub. 1950/1953)

1994

The partnership’s final year.

• The Dying Earth — hardcover reprint, the press’s last book, closing the circle back to its 1976 debut
• The Work of Jack Vance (Jerry Hewett & Daryl F. Mallett, ed. Boden Clarke) — bibliography that became the standard Vance reference for years afterward; cited elsewhere in this project’s VIE.md

Underwood Books (Tim Underwood, solo, post-1994)

After Underwood-Miller closed, Tim Underwood founded Underwood Books (Grass Valley/Nevada City, CA) in 1994, specializing mostly in fantasy/SF art books (the long-running Spectrum annual anthology, Frank Frazetta and Jeffrey Jones art books, etc.) and reissued Philip K. Dick and Stephen King material. It also quietly published the true first editions of Vance’s last two novels — a fact easy to miss because the more widely-seen Tor trade hardcovers followed within months and are what most readers and even some checklists cite as “the” first edition:

• Night Lamp (1996; Gaean Reach) — Underwood Books, April 1996: limited/signed edition of 600 numbered copies, cover by Stephen Hickman, ISBN 1-887424-18-0, $60. Tor’s trade hardcover followed in November 1996 ($23.95). Confirmed by ISFDB, Wikipedia’s own infobox for the novel, SFE picture gallery, and a dealer listing (L.W. Currey) for the Underwood limited edition.
• Ports of Call (1998; Ports of Call/Gaean Reach #1) — Underwood Books, January 1998: limited/signed edition, cover by Rick Berry, ISBN 1-887424-39-3, viii+239pp, $60. Tor’s trade hardcover followed in April 1998 ($24.95). Confirmed by ISFDB and a Dutch review site citing “Eerste druk: Underwood Books, Nevada City.”
• Lurulu (2004; Ports of Call #2), by contrast, appears to have been a Tor-only first edition — no Underwood Books edition has been found for it, suggesting the practice of an Underwood limited edition preceding the Tor trade edition did not continue past Ports of Call.
• The Laughing Magician — an omnibus combining The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel’s Saga (Dying Earth #2–3), illustrated throughout by Stephen Fabian, reworking art from the 1977 Underwood-Miller Eyes of the Overworld. ISBN 1-887424-00-8 (978-1-887424-00-4).
• Publication history is unusually tangled for a Vance title, and sources disagree:
  • First announced as in-progress in a February 1995 fan newsletter (The Vance Phile #5), tentatively “ready in May” at $75, signed/numbered/slipcased.
  • Still being announced as forthcoming in late 2000–2002 fan-site news (release dates given as March 2001, then “early 2002”); at least one buyer’s Amazon order was pushed back to a March 2001 release that itself apparently slipped.
  • pagesofpages.com’s checklist dates the book’s contents to 1997.
  • ISFDB’s title record lists it as “unpublished” outright (with a full collation — 358pp, cover by Fabian — as if a full production existed but the book itself may not have shipped in that form).
  • Yet multiple retailer records (Amazon, eCampus, AuthorWars) show it as an actually-sold hardcover with a 2011 or 2012 publication date (Amazon/eCampus both give 27 Nov 2012; books-by-isbn.com gives 2011), suggesting it may finally have been released roughly a decade and a half after it was first announced — or that retailer metadata is simply wrong/recycled from a listing that was never fulfilled.
  • Net assessment: treat The Laughing Magician’s existence as a real, working title with confirmed cover art and an assigned ISBN, but its actual publication date and even whether copies were ever generally distributed are unresolved; do not cite a single date for it without flagging this discrepancy.

Notes

• Several interviews and essays by Tim Underwood appear inside other publications rather than as standalone books, among them “A Talk with Jack Vance” (1985), the Dutch-language “Orbit Interview: Jack Vance” (1981), the afterword “Jack Vance: The Man and the Myth” (1994), and the three-part retrospective “Ten Years of Underwood-Miller” (1986, with Chuck Miller).
• Sources consulted: ISFDB (publisher, title, and publication records); vancemuseum.com’s Jack Vance Underwood-Miller Bibliography (covers editions “up through 1992” with month-level dates and binding/limitation detail, but has not been rechecked against a live source); the Wikipedia “Underwood–Miller” article’s publication list (comprehensive but year-level only); pagesofpages.com’s Vance checklist (collection contents, not independently re-verified against ISFDB for every title); vancemuseum.com’s Jack Vance Information Archive (dated fan-news items, used for The Laughing Magician’s publication timeline); books-by-isbn.com and retailer listings (Amazon, eCampus, AuthorWars) for Underwood Books ISBN-block data; and this project’s own VIE.md for cross-checking true first-publication dates.
• Open items: the View from Chickweed’s Window 1978-vs-1979 date conflict with VIE.md; the Cugel’s Saga and Complete Magnus Ridolph date discrepancies above; whether Suldrun’s Garden: Lyonesse I was really a distinct parallel hardcover; independent re-verification of the Green Magic, Lost Moons, The Complete Magnus Ridolph, When the Five Moons Rise, and Chateau d’If contents directly against ISFDB; and The Laughing Magician’s true publication date/status (see above).

Underwood-Miller Contents: Collections and Their Story Lists

For collections and anthologies only — novels and reissues are not repeated here, since their content is just the one title named above.

Green Magic: The Fantasy Realms of Jack Vance (1979)

• Green Magic
• The Miracle Workers
• The Moon Moth
• The Mitr
• The Men Return
• The Narrow Land
• The Pilgrims
• The Secret
• Liane the Wayfarer

Galactic Effectuator (1980)

• The Dogtown Tourist Agency
• Freitzke’s Turn

Lost Moons (1982)

• The World-Thinker
• Dream Castle (a revised text; its first appearance under this title)
• The Potters of Firsk
• Meet Miss Universe
• Winner Lose All
• Sabotage on Sulphur Planet
• Four Hundred Blackbirds
• Seven Exits from Bocz
• Assault on a City

Rhialto the Marvellous (1984, Brandywyne Books)

• Morreion (revised from the 1979 Underwood-Miller chapbook)
• Fader’s Waft
• The Murthe

The Complete Magnus Ridolph (1984/1985)

• The Kokod Warriors
• The Unspeakable McInch
• The Howling Bounders
• The King of Thieves
• The Spa of the Stars
• Coup de Grace
• The Sub-Standard Sardines
• To B or Not to C or to D

The Augmented Agent and Other Stories (1986)

• Shape-Up
• The Man from Zodiac
• Golden Girl
• The Planet Machine (a variant of The Plagian Siphon)
• Crusade to Maxus (a variant of Overlords of Maxus)
• Three-Legged Joe
• Sjambak
• The Augmented Agent (a variant of I-C-a-BeM)

The Dark Side of the Moon (1986)

• Introduction
• Sulwen’s Planet
• Dover Spargill’s Ghastly Floater
• Phalid’s Fate
• DP!
• The Phantom Milkman
• Alfred’s Ark
• A Practical Man’s Guide
• First Star I See Tonight
• The Temple of Han
• The House Lords
• Planet of the Black Dust
• Ultimate Quest (also known as Dead Ahead)
• Parapsyche
• The Enchanted Princess

Chateau d’If and Other Stories (1990)

• Abercrombie Station
• Cholwell’s Chickens
• Chateau d’If
• The Gift of Gab
• Rumfuddle

When the Five Moons Rise (1992)

• The Miracle Workers
• When the Five Moons Rise
• Telek
• Noise
• The New Prime
• Cil
• Guyal of Sfere
• The Men Return

Subterranean Press: Publications in Chronological Order

Subterranean Press (Burton, Michigan, founded 1995 by William Schafer) became the primary specialty publisher of Jack Vance material in the mid-to-late 2000s, coinciding with the Vance Integral Edition’s completion and Vance’s final years. Most of the fiction volumes below were edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan and use VIE-restored texts rather than the original, often magazine-cut, printings.

2007 - The Jack Vance Treasury — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan); Locus Award 2008, 2nd place, Collection

Book contents:

• Preface (Jack Vance)
• “Jack Vance: An Appreciation” (George R.R. Martin)
• Introduction: Fruit from the Tree of Life
• The Dragon Masters
• Liane the Wayfarer
• Sail 25
• The Gift of Gab
• The Miracle Workers
• Guyal of Sfere
• Noise
• The Kokod Warriors
• The Overworld
• The Men Return
• The Sorcerer Pharesm
• The New Prime
• The Secret
• The Moon Moth
• The Bagful of Dreams
• The Mitr
• Morreion
• The Last Castle
• “Biographical Sketch & Other Facts” (Jack Vance)

2007 - The Kragen — chapbook, standalone edition of the 1964 novella that later became the source text for The Blue World

Book contents:

• The Kragen

2008 - The Jack Vance Reader — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan)

Sources disagree on the exact year: Terry Dowling’s own bibliography gives July 2008, but the publisher’s current product-page metadata shows 2011, likely reflecting a later restock rather than the true first edition.

Book contents:

• Emphyrio
• The Domains of Koryphon
• The Languages of Pao

2009 - Wild Thyme, Green Magic — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan)

Book contents:

• Introduction (Terry Dowling & Jonathan Strahan)
• Assault on a City
• Green Magic
• The World-Thinker
• The Augmented Agent
• Coup de Grace
• Chateau d’If
• The Potters of Firsk
• The Seventeen Virgins
• Ullward’s Retreat
• Seven Exits from Bocz
• Wild Thyme and Violets (an outline, not a finished story)
• Rumfuddle
• “A Different View of Jack Vance” (essay, Norma Vance)
• “A Jack Vance Biography” (essay, Norma Vance)

2009 - This Is Me, Jack Vance! — autobiography, dictated to Jeremy Cavaterra; won the 2010 Hugo Award, Best Related Work

See also Composition-Contexts.md for content mined from it.

2009 - Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance — tribute anthology of new stories by other authors set in the Dying Earth universe, not written by Vance (ed. Gardner Dozois & George R.R. Martin)

This tribute anthology is not tabulated here because its contents fall outside this project’s Vance bibliography.

2010 - Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Vol. 1 — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan), 14 early stories each followed by a Vance-written afterword

Book contents:

• Introduction
• Hard-Luck Diggings (with Vance’s own afterword)
• The Temple of Han (with afterword)
• The Masquerade on Dicantropus (with afterword)
• Abercrombie Station (with afterword)
• Three-Legged Joe (with afterword)
• DP! (with afterword)
• Shape-Up (with afterword)
• Sjambak (with afterword)
• The Absent-Minded Professor (with afterword)
• When the Five Moons Rise (with afterword)
• The Devil on Salvation Bluff (with afterword)
• Where Hesperus Falls (with afterword)
• The Phantom Milkman (with afterword)
• Dodkin’s Job (with afterword)

2011 - Dangerous Ways: Selected Mysteries — mystery omnibus (introduction by Dowling & Strahan)

Book contents:

• The Man in the Cage
• Bad Ronald
• The Deadly Isles

2012 - Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Vol. 2 — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan); Locus Award 2013, 11th place, Collection

Book contents:

• The Dogtown Tourist Agency
• Freitzke’s Turn
• I’ll Build Your Dream Castle
• Golden Girl
• Sulwen’s Planet
• Cholwell’s Chickens
• A Practical Man’s Guide
• The Narrow Land
• The Enchanted Princess
• Son of the Tree

2012 - Desperate Days: Selected Mysteries, Vol. 2 — mystery omnibus (ed. Dowling & Strahan)

Book contents:

• Introduction (Dowling & Strahan)
• The Fox Valley Murders
• The Pleasant Grove Murders
• The Dark Ocean
• “The Genesee Slough Murders: Outline for a Novel” (lettered edition only)

2013 - Magic Highways: The Early Jack Vance, Vol. 3 — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan)

Sources disagree on the exact story list — see Notes.

Book contents:

• Introduction
• Phalid’s Fate
• Planet of the Black Dust
• Ultimate Quest (also reported as Dead Ahead)
• Men of the Ten Books (also reported as The Uninhibited Robot and The Visitors)
• The Planet Machine
• Dover Spargill’s Ghastly Floater
• Winner Lose All
• Sabotage on Sulfur Planet
• The House Lords
• Sanatoris Short-Cut
• The Unspeakable McInch
• The Sub-Standard Sardines
• The Howling Bounders
• The King of Thieves
• The Spa of the Stars
• To B or Not to C or to D

2013 - The Dying Earth — illustrated edition of the original 1950 story-cycle (illus. Tom Kidd), distinct from the two Underwood-Miller hardcovers of the same title (1976, 1994; see Underwood-Miller.md)

Book contents:

• Mazirian the Magician
• Turjan of Miir
• T’sais
• Liane the Wayfarer
• Ulan Dhor Ends a Dream
• Guyal of Sfere

2014 - Minding the Stars: The Early Jack Vance, Vol. 4 — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan)

Book contents:

• Introduction
• Nopalgarth (a variant of The Brains of Earth)
• Telek
• Four Hundred Blackbirds
• Alfred’s Ark
• Meet Miss Universe
• The World Between
• Milton Hack from Zodiac
• Parapsyche

2015 - Grand Crusades: The Early Jack Vance, Vol. 5 — collection (ed. Dowling & Strahan), 1,000 copies; the final volume of the five-volume “Early Jack Vance” series

Book contents:

• Introduction
• The Rapparee
• Crusade to Maxus
• Gold and Iron
• The Houses of Iszm
• Space Opera

Notes

• Magic Highways Vol. 3 story-list discrepancy: the publisher’s current site copy lists Phalid’s Fate, Planet of the Black Dust, Ultimate Quest, Men of the Ten Books, The Planet Machine, Dover Spargill’s Ghastly Floater, Winner Lose All, Sabotage on Sulfur Planet, The House Lords, Sanatoris Short-Cut, The Unspeakable McInch, The Sub-Standard Sardines, The Howling Bounders, The King of Thieves, The Spa of the Stars, and To B or Not to C or to D, while a 2014 blog report of the same publisher’s original jacket copy instead lists Dead Ahead in place of “Ultimate Quest,” and The Uninhibited Robot and The Visitors in place of “Men of the Ten Books”/“The Planet Machine.” “Ultimate Quest” and “Dead Ahead” are known variant titles of the same story per VIE.md, so this may not be a real content difference, but it has not been reconciled title-by-title.
• Sources consulted: subterraneanpress.com’s own product pages (publisher-primary, though the site’s “year” field sometimes reflects a later restock rather than the true first edition); ISFDB publication/title records; Terry Dowling’s own bibliography page (he co-edited every fiction volume above); Black Gate’s blog coverage of the “Early Jack Vance” series (used for supplementary story-level detail); and Publishers Weekly reviews.
• Open items: reconcile the Magic Highways discrepancy above title-by-title; confirm The Jack Vance Reader‘s true first-edition year; independently re-verify the two mystery omnibuses’ page counts against ISFDB directly rather than the publisher’s site and Publishers Weekly.

Spatterlight Press

Spatterlight Press

Interview Fantasize

https://www.fantasize.nl/actueel/interview-koen-vyverman-uitgeverij-spatterlight-en-jack-vance/

Interview Fantasyworld

https://www.fantasywereld.nl/boeken/boekinterviews/interview-met-koen-vyverman-spatterlight/

Cosmopolis: Issue List

Cosmopolis was the newsletter of the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), published monthly (with occasional combined issues) from January 2000 to July 2005, for 63 issues, after which it was succeeded by Extant (see VIE.md for the VIE’s own history). The table below gives, for every issue, its publication date and its lead (“page 1”) article or feature — a useful index for locating when a given VIE event, announcement, or essay first appeared.

Methodology and sourcing

The title for each issue is the heading of the article printed first in that issue (i.e. page 1 of its own table of contents), read directly from the issue’s own masthead and contents page — not a secondary paraphrase. Two recurring generic column titles are common early on: “Project Report” and, from #24 onward, “38’s Crucible” (Paul Rhoads’ monthly editorial), and “Work Tsar Status Report” (Joel Riedesel’s production-progress column, later shortened to “Work Tsar Report”). Where the lead item is one of these recurring columns, a short parenthetical indicates that issue’s specific topic, drawn from the same issue’s table of contents. Dates are as printed on each issue’s own masthead; these agree with the publication dates given on the Foreverness/integralarchive.org download index. Issue #46 (January 2004) was missing from the local archive as of this writing and has been downloaded from integralarchive.org (cosmo/Cosmopolis-46.pdf) to complete the run; all 63 issues are now present locally. Each issue number below links to the matching PDF in the local cosmopolis/ archive.

2000

• Cosmopolis #1 — January 2000 — Welcome to Cosmopolis
• Cosmopolis #2 — February 2000 — The VIE Vision
• Cosmopolis #3 — March 2000 — Keeping the Gate
• Cosmopolis #4 — April 2000 — Planet of Retribution (fiction, by Zach Fance)
• Cosmopolis #5 — May 2000 — The Works of Jack Vance on Audiotape
• Cosmopolis #6 — June 2000 — Visiting Jack Vance
• Cosmopolis #7 — July 2000 — A Studied Whimsy (on Lyonesse, by Timothy Virkkala)
• Cosmopolis #8 — August 2000 — An Honor Roll: The Digitizers
• Cosmopolis #9 — September 2000 — Fans in Japan
• Cosmopolis #10 — October 2000 — The Updated VIE Volume List (the 60→44 volume-count change)
• Cosmopolis #11 — November 2000 — Report from Milan
• Cosmopolis #12 — December 2000 — Down Payment

2001

• Cosmopolis #13 — January–February 2001 — Will the Popularization of Jack Vance Save the West from Plunging into a New Dark Age?
• Cosmopolis #14 — February–March 2001 — View from the Ivory Tower (report on the Oakland TI Conference)
• Cosmopolis #15 — April–May 2001 — Proofing Update and Honor Roll (also previews “The Gift Volume”)
• Cosmopolis #16 — June–July 2001 — Updated Subscriber List
• Cosmopolis #17 — August 2001 — Project Report (the Gift Edition goes to press)
• Cosmopolis #18 — September 2001 — Project Report (VIE delivery date delayed; set split into two waves)
• Cosmopolis #19 — October 2001 — Now Available! VIE Wearables!
• Cosmopolis #20 — November 2001 — Report on the Frankfurt Book Fair
• Cosmopolis #21 — December 2001 — One Year of TI (by Steve Sherman)

2002

• Cosmopolis #22 — January 2002 — The VIE Text Flow (by Joel Riedesel)
• Cosmopolis #23 — February 2002 — Scanners and Jockeys and Imps, Oh My!
• Cosmopolis #24 — March 2002 — Jack Vance Guest of Honor at Norwescon
• Cosmopolis #25 — April 2002 — Work Tsar Status Report (Wave 1 volumes list)
• Cosmopolis #26 — May 2002 — Work Tsar Status Report (announcing the “Science Fiction Volume”)
• Cosmopolis #27 — June 2002 — The Logan Square Book Club vs. Jack Vance (by Chuck King)
• Cosmopolis #28 — July 2002 — Post Proofing Report (Wave 1 Post-Proofing complete)
• Cosmopolis #29 — August 2002 — Request for Payment (final Readers’/Deluxe pricing set)
• Cosmopolis #30 — September 2002 — Golden Master One
• Cosmopolis #31 — October 2002 — GM2 (Golden Master 2 report)
• Cosmopolis #32 — November 2002 — DD Scanning Completed!
• Cosmopolis #33 — December 2002 — Gratitude to Post-Proofers

2003

• Cosmopolis #34 — January 2003 — 38’s Crucible (Wave 1 delivery progress)
• Cosmopolis #35 — February 2003 — Lurulu Completed (announcement from John Vance)
• Cosmopolis #36 — March 2003 — Work Tsar Status Report
• Cosmopolis #37 — April 2003 — Report from Italy (Wave 1 arrives; Milan visit)
• Cosmopolis #38 — May 2003 — Vance on Vance (by Richard Chandler)
• Cosmopolis #39 — June 2003 — It Really Happened! (report from Marcon 38, by David B. Williams)
• Cosmopolis #40 — July 2003 — A Jack Vance Biography (by Norma Vance)
• Cosmopolis #41 — August 2003 — Sneak Peek (Jack Vance telephone interview excerpt)
• Cosmopolis #42 — September 2003 — VIE Volunteers Talk With Jack Vance
• Cosmopolis #43 — October 2003 — Remarks in Connection with the VIE (by Jack Vance himself)
• Cosmopolis #44 — November 2003 — Help Publicize the VIE
• Cosmopolis #45 — December 2003 — VIE Subscription Sharing

2004

• Cosmopolis #46 — January 2004 — The Ellery Queen Stories (announcing the discovery and the special EQ volume)
• Cosmopolis #47 — February 2004 — Work Tsar Report
• Cosmopolis #48 — March 2004 — Work Tsar Report
• Cosmopolis #49 — May 2004 — VIE News (TI, Textport, new subscribers)
• Cosmopolis #50 — June 2004 — Cosmopolis Number 50: A Golden Milestone (50th-issue retrospective)
• Cosmopolis #51 — July 2004 — Talking About the VIE (by Linnéa Anglemark)
• Cosmopolis #52 — August 2004 — Work Tsar Report
• Cosmopolis #53 — September 2004 — Volunteer Spotlight (Hans van der Veeke)
• Cosmopolis #54 — October 2004 — Another Step Closer — GM3.2 Report (by Tim Stretton)
• Cosmopolis #55 — November 2004 — Recruitment Drive (by Tim Stretton)
• Cosmopolis #56 — December 2004 — Work Tsar Report

2005

• Cosmopolis #57 — January 2005 — And So It Ends
• Cosmopolis #58 — February 2005 — A Visit With Jack Vance: 1967 (by Guy H. Lillian III)
• Cosmopolis #59 — March 2005 — We Have Done It! (final VIE Work Credits, by Hans van der Veeke)
• Cosmopolis #60 — April 2005 — This and That (by Paul Rhoads)
• Cosmopolis #61 — May 2005 — Wave 2; In Milan
• Cosmopolis #62 — June 2005 — EQ Volume Update (by Chuck King)
• Cosmopolis #63 — July 2005 — Wave 2 Shipping (final issue)

Notes

• After #63, the newsletter continued as Extant (23 further issues, March 2005–January 2008); see VIE.md and the vance-research skill’s references/vie-project-history.md for that continuation.
• Full plain-text extractions of all 63 issues (via pdftotext -layout) are available locally at Jack Vance/Cosmopolis/text/, making the full run full-text searchable without relying on Spotlight alone.

Extant: Issue List

Extant succeeded Cosmopolis as the VIE’s newsletter after the main project’s 2006 close, continuing under Paul Rhoads’ editorship with VIE project updates, essays, and (increasingly, as the project wound down) general Vance-related and off-topic material. It ran for 23 issues, March 2005–January 2008 (see VIE.md and the vance-research skill’s references/vie-project-history.md for the surrounding project history).

Methodology and sourcing

As with Cosmopolis.md, the title given for each issue is the heading of its own lead (“page 1”) item, read from the issue’s own masthead and contents page. Dates and issue numbers are as printed on each issue’s own masthead; these agree with the publication dates given on the Foreverness/integralarchive.org download index. All 23 issues, plus an alternate “uncensored” printing of #12, were downloaded from integralarchive.org (cosmo/Extant-NN.pdf) into Extant/ and converted to plain text (pdftotext -layout) into Extant/text/. Issue #12 has two versions: the standard printing and a separate uncensored printing, both retrieved; the difference between the two has not yet been examined. Issue #11: the copy served at integralarchive.org/cosmo/Extant-11.pdf is internally malformed at the source (confirmed identical, and equally corrupt, on both the live site and a January 2025 Wayback Machine snapshot; qpdf’s structural repair failed too — its page tree is missing entirely, not just its xref table). A working copy was found at the mirror vanderveeke.net/foreverness/cosmo/Extant-11.pdf and used instead.

2005

• Extant #1 — March 2005 — Down With Shakespeare
• Extant #2 — April 2005 — Scrolls of Honor (for VIE volunteers)
• Extant #3 — May 2005 — Notes on the American Literary Tradition
• Extant #4 — June 2005 — VIE Project Up-date
• Extant #5 — July 2005 — Milan Up-date
• Extant #6 — August 2005 — VIE Up-Date
• Extant #7 — October 2005 — V.I.E. Rumor and Chaff
• Extant #8 — November 2005 — VIE Project Up-Dates
• Extant #9 — December 2005 — VIE Project Up-date (second printing delivered; Ellery Queen progress)

2006

• Extant #10 — January 2006 — VIE Project Up-date (Ellery Queen; bibliography of extra VIE sets/volumes)
• Extant #11 — February 2006 — VIE Project Up-date (also: “The VIE in Paperback,” on Edition Andreas Irle’s new paperback line; “Taking the ISR Online”)
• Extant #12 — March 2006 — VIE Project Up-date (two printings retrieved: standard and “uncensored”)
• Extant #13 — April 2006 — VIE Project Up-date (includes “A Commendation for the Seldom-Thanked,” Chuck King’s account of the Ellery Queen manuscript find)
• Extant #14 — July 2006 — VIE Project Up-date (announces the Foreverness site)
• Extant #15 — September 2006 — A Letter from Bob Luckin, and VIE News
• Extant #16 — October 2006 — VIE Set and Volume Availability
• Extant #17 — December 2006 — Thinking About Vance (“the mystery of the mysteries,” by Paul Rhoads)

2007

• Extant #18 — January 2007 — VIE Update (by Paul Rhoads)
• Extant #19 — March 2007 — Jack Vance’s Lost Worlds and Ancient Futures (by David B. Williams)
• Extant #20 — April 2007 — Recent Vance Publications
• Extant #21 — August 2007 — Cugel’s Pedigree: Four Expressions of the Archetypal Peripatetic Scamp (by Paul Rhoads)
• Extant #22 — December 2007 — The Inner Darkness of the Winged Being (on the mystery novels)

2008

• Extant #23 — January 2008 — Extant Reprieved / Happy Triumph: Putting a Period to the VIE Adventure (final issue; records the VIE corporation’s dissolution)

Notes

• Extant was preceded by Cosmopolis (63 issues, January 2000–July 2005); see Cosmopolis.md.
• Issue #23 is confirmed as the last issue: it documents the VIE corporation’s Certificate of Dissolution and was explicitly framed as a final “reprieve” after #22 had already been intended as the close.

Interviews

“Jack Vance: Go For Broke” — Locus #619, August 2012

A summary and citation record for this interview, not a reproduction of it. The full text is copyrighted by Locus Publications; only brief, clearly-attributed factual points are noted here. The complete issue is held locally at interview/Locus-2012-08.pdf (and .mobi).

Citation

Locus #619, August 2012, Vol. 69 No. 2, ed. Liza Groen Trombi, Locus Publications. Interview title: “Jack Vance: Go For Broke,” pp. 6, continued p. 52. Cover and interview design by Francesca Myman. (Bibliographic record: ISFDB Title #1478178.) This is one of Vance’s last published interviews, appearing about nine months before his death in May 2013.

What it covers

Alongside a standard biographical sidebar (birth, early jobs, Berkeley, Pearl Harbor, Merchant Marine service, marriage to Norma, honors, bibliography by series), the interview itself touches on: Vance’s attitude toward his own reputation and craft (he describes writing primarily to earn a living rather than for recognition); his reading habits late in life (no longer reading SF/fantasy, preferring non-fiction, history, detective fiction, and the occasional western); the circumstances of writing Vandals of the Void on commission while living in Positano, Italy; his own ranking of his mystery novels; an anecdote about building and salvaging a houseboat with Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson; and an anecdote about Frederik Pohl, a double-sold story, and the writing of “The Last Castle” as a replacement.

New factual points for the research record

• Houseboat date, a third data point. Vance himself, speaking in 2012, describes the houseboat project (with Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson) as having happened “40 years ago” — i.e., c. 1972. This conflicts with both dates already on file in vance-life-and-works.md (1962 and 1966). As primary testimony gathered decades after the fact, it is not automatically more reliable than the other two — see vance-research-log.md for the three-way discrepancy this creates.
• Composition context for “The Last Castle” (1966). Per Vance’s account, “The Last Castle” was written as a replacement story for Frederik Pohl (then editor of Galaxy) after Vance’s agent had sold an earlier story to two buyers at once and the sale to Pohl fell through. This is a new compositional-history detail not previously in the record; source tier is primary testimony (Vance’s own recollection, 46 years after the fact).

Source tier

Primary testimony (per SKILL.md’s source tiers) — Vance’s own words, but reported from memory, decades after the events described. Treat accordingly: valuable for what he chose to say, not automatically authoritative over documentary evidence.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION OF THE INTERVIEW:

John Holbrook Vance was born August 28, 1916, in San Francisco, California. He worked as a bellhop, in a cannery, and on a gold dredge before attending the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied engineering, physics, and journalism, though he never graduated. A lifelong musician and music lover, Vance’s first published works were jazz reviews for The Daily Californian.

Vance worked as an electrician at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, leaving the area a month before the December 1941 attack that brought the United States into World War II. His poor eyesight made it impossible for him to serve in the military, but he memorized an eye chart and joined the Merchant Marine. He wrote his first published story, “The World-Thinker” (1945), while at sea. Before becoming a full-time writer in the 1970s, he worked as a seaman, surveyor, and carpenter, among other occupations. He married Norma Genevieve Ingold in 1946; she died in 2008. Vance traveled the world extensively, living and writing in Tahiti, South Africa, Italy, and Kashmir, among other locales.

He published short fiction in the pulps in the late 1940s and early 1950s, contributing regularly to Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Notable short works include “Telek” (1952), “The Moon Moth” (1961), and the Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning novella “The Last Castle” (1966). Some of his short fiction was collected in Future Tense (1964), The World Between, and Other Stories (1965), Eight Fantasms and Magics (1969), The Best of Jack Vance (1976), Green Magic (1979), Lost Moons (1982), The Narrow Land (1982), Light from a Lone Star (1985), The Dark Side of the Moon: Stories of the Future (1985), Galactic Effectuator (1985), The Augmented Agent, and Other Stories (1986), Chateau D’If, and Other Stories (1990), When the Five Moons Rise (1992), and The Jack Vance Treasury (2007). His Magnus Ridolph SF stories were collected in The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966; expanded 1984 as The Complete Magnus Ridolph).

Vance’s landmark Dying Earth sequence, set in the far future, began with The Dying Earth (1950) and continued with The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Cugel’s Saga (1983), Rhialto the Marvelous (1984), and several related stories. Vance redefined the nature of planetary romance with Big Planet (1952), and continued exploring that universe in the sequel Showboat World (1975).

Most of Vance’s novels take place in series. Major works include the Demon Princes sequence: The Star King (1964), The Killing Machine (1964), The Palace of Love (1966), The Face (1979), and The Book of Dreams (1981); the Planet of Adventure series: City of the Chasch (1968), Servants of the Wankh (1969), The Dirdir (1969), and The Pnume (1970); the Durdane trilogy: The Anome (1971), The Brave Free Men (1973), and The Asutra (1974); the Alastor Cluster sequence: Trullion: Alastor 2262 (1973), Marune: Alastor 933 (1975), and Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978); the Lyonesse fantasy series: Suldrun’s Garden (1983), The Green Pearl (1985), and the World Fantasy Award-winning Madouc (1989); the Cadwal Chronicles: Araminta Station (1987), Ecce and Old Earth (1991), and Throy (1992); and the Ports of Call series: Ports of Call (1998) and Lurulu (2004).

Standalone SF/fantasy works include The Space Pirate (1953), Vandals of the Void (1953), To Live Forever (1956); The Languages of Pao (1957); Slaves of the Klau (1958), Hugo Award-winner The Dragon Masters (1963), Son of the Tree (1964), The Houses of Iszm (1964), Space Opera (1965), Monsters in Orbit (1965), The Brains of Earth (1966), The Blue World (1966), Emphyrio (1969); The Gray Prince (1974), Maske: Thaery (1976), and Night Lamp (1996).

He also wrote a number of mystery novels in the 1960s, with one, The Man in the Cage (1960), winning an Edgar Award. Vance wrote for Ellery Queen and also wrote scripts for the TV show Captain Video. His autobiography, This Is Me, Jack Vance! (2009), won a Hugo for Best Related Book.

Books about Vance include Jack Vance, eds. Tim Underwood & Chuck Miller (1980); The Jack Vance Lexicon: From Ahulph to Zipangote: The Coined Words of Jack Vance, ed. Dan Temianka (1992); and Vance Space, Michael Andre-Driussi (1997). The anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (2009), includes original stories written in Vance’s honor.

Vance is one of the most influential SF authors from the postwar period, and his work inspired authors including Avram Davidson, Harlan Ellison, Matthew Hughes, George R. R. Martin, Michael Moorcock, and Gene Wolfe. He won the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 1984; the SFWA Grand Master Award in 1997; and he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2001. He lives in Oakland, California.

“I’ve always let my writing speak for itself. I’m not going to go around bragging about anything. If anyone likes the stuff, they’ll find out, and if they don’t like it, they won’t. Apparently I’ve got a pretty good reputation.”

“I don’t read any science fiction or fantasy anymore. It leaves me cold. I just read non-fiction and history and detective stories, once in a while a western story. I’ve not read science fiction or fantasy for recreation since I was a kid. I used to subscribe to Weird Tales. I remember running out to the mailbox — I had to run a quarter mile to get to it, we lived out in the country — to grab Weird Tales and take it back.”

“I wrote to make money, not for any other purpose. I just wrote the stuff because I was pretty good at it, and I wrote as fast as I could. I don’t glorify my writing at all. For some reason I have the knack. I can’t take any credit for it, any more than you can take credit for being a beautiful girl.”

“I was commissioned to write The Vandals of the Void. My agent called me and said this company was producing some books for kids and I’d been commissioned to write one. I said, ‘All right.’ I was over in Italy at the time, and I wrote it in a place called Positano. It’s a lovely place along the coast of Italy, 11 miles south of Sorrento. I wrote a murder mystery about that place, called Strange People, Queer Notions. I’m not too proud of my murder mysteries. I kind of like The Fox Valley Murders and The Desert Valley Murder. Bad Ronald was a good one. The rest of the things, they’re adequate.”

“I’d forgotten Locus still existed. In the old days Charlie Brown would have parties and everyone would get gassed. I remember going up with Poul Anderson — in those days Poul was one of my really good friends. He was such a wonderful guy, one of the finest fellows I met in my whole blooming life. Frank Herbert, Poul, and I were building this houseboat up in Richmond. We had it half-constructed when a storm came up and sank it. We went out and the houseboat was just a ridge sticking up out of the water. It was dismal, of course. We said, ‘We’ve got to get it out!’ Frank Herbert said, ‘No, I’ve had it,’ and walked away from the whole thing. So Poul and I got started on diving to lift the houseboat out of the water. I got diving equipment and went down. Poul couldn’t because he had bad ears. We worked our ends off. We got some 50-gallon drums and we had to fill them with water to get them to sink. I would push these 50-gallon drums under the boat, and then we had an air compressor to put air into these drums so they floated, and up came the houseboat. We fixed the houseboat and sailed it up the river — this was 40 years ago. We had such fun in that houseboat for years after that.”

“I remember one time Fred Pohl and I were at some kind of convention up in Reno. I went up to him and said, ‘Hey there, Fred!’ He looked at me and said, ‘Who are you?’ and I got mad and said, ‘Go to hell, I’m not going to tell you.’ I walked away from him and was standing on the stairs there, and 15 minutes later he walked up and said, ‘Jack Vance, you son of a bitch, you.’ He was editor of Galaxy at the time. My agent sold him a story, but he’d sold it to someone else first as well, so he got Galaxy’s money and the other guy’s money too. Fred Pohl couldn’t publish the story. He called me and was mad at me. I was in Tahiti at the time. He said, ‘Give me that money back!’ So I wrote him one called ‘The Last Castle’ instead, which he was happy for.”

“I’ll tell you a story about Robert Silverberg. One day Harlan Ellison came up to visit Silverberg. They went out in the backyard, by the swimming pool in the garden. Ellison asked Silverberg to read a manuscript of his. So Bob sat in the chair there, and began reading this story. He took a page out, read it, and threw it in the air. There was a big wind, so Harlan was running, chasing the pages. Bob kept reading these pages, throwing them in the air. Some of them got into the swimming pool. Harlan fished them out and was running all over the garden.”

“Come to think of it, I do like most of my books. I did so much of my writing while traveling. My wife Norma would type for me. Poor Norma. She worked harder than I did. She was such a wonderful lady. I miss the hell out of her. Here’s how we met. I was working. I looked over the fence and there was this girl on a porch, playing with a kitten. She was petting it and being nice to it. I looked over and I thought, ‘She’s being nice to the cat. I wonder if she’d be nice to me?’ So I asked her for a glass of water. She ran into the house, came out and gave me a glass of water, I got to talking to her, and a while later we were married. She was a sophomore at Cal, the University of California, at the time.”

“I never was a good-looking guy. You can see my picture; I’m pretty ordinary looking. The girls never chased me much, but they never chased me away. Do you think I look my age now? I hate to tell you how old I am. I don’t feel my age. Obviously I don’t act like it.”

“My first year at Cal was 1937. I had lots of fun there, though I never graduated. Terrible thing is, my two best friends from Cal, Don Matthews and Jim Tierney, both got killed in the war. Don was flying an airplane over Germany, he got shot down, and Tierney got shot in Italy. I escaped the war scot-free as a merchant seaman. I was in Leyte, the Philippine Islands, when the war ended. We were in a little cove, and people shot rockets up in the air. The war was over, and it was spectacular to see the sky full of these rockets going up.”

“I regard P. G. Wodehouse as the greatest writer in the English language — except, of course, for me. I remember this poem he wrote, ‘Good Gnus.’ It goes like this:

When cares attack and life seems black, How sweet it is to pot a yak, Or puncture hares and grizzly bears, And others I could mention; But in my Animals ‘Who’s Who’ No name stands higher than the Gnu; And each new gnu that comes in view Receives my prompt attention.

When Afric’s sun is sinking low, And shadows wander to and fro, And everywhere there’s in the air A hush that’s deep and solemn; Then is the time good men and true With View Halloo pursue the gnu; (The safest spot to put your shot is through the spinal column).

To take the creature by surprise We must adopt some rude disguise, Although deceit is never sweet, And falsehoods don’t attract us; So, as with gun in hand you wait, Remember to impersonate A tuft of grass, a mountain-pass, A kopje or a cactus.

A brief suspense, and then at last The waiting’s o’er, the vigil past; A careful aim. A spurt of flame. It’s done. You’ve pulled the trigger, And one more gnu, so fair and frail, Has handed in its dinner-pail; (The females all are rather small, The males are somewhat bigger).”

“P. G. Wodehouse was a big influence, but there’s another guy, Jeffrey Farnol. Very few people know of Jeffrey Farnol. He wrote these wonderful romantic stories, just marvelous, and nobody knows who he is. He wrote some of the best pirate stories ever. Then there’s C. L. Moore. She and Farnol … I wouldn’t say they had any influence on me exactly, except that I admired them so much, and I felt if I could write as good as they did I would be pleased, and happy.”

“I dictated my autobiography, This Is Me, Jack Vance!, and a friend of mine typed it for me, and I had a lot of fun. I’ve had a very eventful life. In fact, there is probably so much I left out. I like this lesson I put in there, to help people at a dinner party if they break wind. If you’re at a wonderful formal dinner party and everyone is dressed up, and you break wind with trombone-like resonance, and everyone is looking around, and you don’t want to be blamed for it, how do you avoid it? What you do is, you just turn your head and look at the person sitting next to you, and then turn back and pretend you don’t notice the smell. Everybody sees you look slightly at the man or lady sitting next to you, and everybody starts staring at them. This leaves the person next to you outraged, but what can she or he do? This is good advice for anybody.”

“There’s one episode I talk about in the autobiography that haunts me, actually. I was a merchant seaman for a while, on a ship in Australia, and we took off and spent 28 days at sea. We approached this port, Tocopilla, off the coast of Chile, right on the Andes. We were in Tocopilla to pick up a load of bird droppings — guano. We dropped our anchor, and out from Tocopilla came a half-dozen boats, running at us frantically. The idea was, we’d take a rope, attach a dollar to it, and throw it over the side. They’d take the dollar and tie a bottle of brandy to the rope and throw it back for us to pick it up. Of course, within 20 minutes everyone was rolling around drunk, because we’d been 28 days at sea, and here was this town with all the shore delights waiting for us, and we started by getting drunk right away with those dollar bottles of brandy.”

“So we went ashore. It’s a poor country with all these bars around to sell you booze, and all these girls around, and cathouses. It’s amazing how many of these places sell you booze, and how many girls there are, and they’re all ages and all different flavors — some beautiful, some not so beautiful. I think I was about 19, and I’ll admit that I took advantage of all the delights of going ashore at Tocopilla. I chased girls with the best of them, then went back to the ship, and I was so drunk that I had a hangover and stayed on board the ship for two days. Then this friend of mine and I decided we would go ashore and not get drunk — we’d just go and watch the native people.”

“So we went off to the far end of the city, to a place that was a little bit more upscale. Everything was more proper. We went into a soda fountain, and sat down and ordered something to drink. A couple of girls came in and sat at a table next to us — high-school girls, dressed nice and proper. They seemed so different from the others. And we thought, ‘Look at these pretty girls, so polite and obviously top class.’ One of them was especially beautiful. This friend of mine and I, we weren’t planning on making ourselves obnoxious to the girls, but I could speak a little Spanish, so we got talking to them and invited them over to our table and ordered them a drink.”

“Finally this one girl, I’ve forgotten her name — such a beautiful girl, she looked like a movie star, and I kind of fell in love with her — I asked her if she’d like to go to dinner at a nice restaurant. The girls talked to each other and one said she wouldn’t go, but the one I liked said yes. She said she knew of a nice restaurant, and so we left the ice cream parlour and got into a taxi, and she gave him instructions to go off south, down along this bumpy road that led along the shore. It was now dusk, and kind of dark. We drove down this road with the Andes up one side and the other was dark water and the moonlight, and I can sit here right now and recall the gorgeous scenery. We drove down the road for ten miles, and came to this restaurant, and the guy who was doing the cooking just had a little stove and some tables. We took a table right near the beach, and ordered some red wine, and I don’t think we ordered anything else — he just brought us some fish, and the taxi driver sat at a table, and we paid his way too. We had dinner there, and I talked to the girl and we got to know each other, and I found her such a delightful girl — in short, I fell in love with her.”

“We finally finished, and I asked where she lived, and took her home. We got out of the car and I took her up to the house where she lived. I was about to kiss her good night, but she opened the door, looked in, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into the house with her.”

“Now this sounds a bit naughty, but — I took her to bed. Of course I was a young kid, but I was just fascinated with her, and oh my word, what an evening. I finally sneaked out of the house, and I forget where I stayed the night. I’d arranged to meet this girl the next day, and my ship was about due to take off. I wanted to leave her something, so I went to a little jeweler’s shop and got her a little silver cup — it wasn’t very much. I went to where she lived and she came to the door. I gave her this little cup and said, ‘I wish you would come to California,’ and she said, ‘No possible.’ I said goodbye, said I was sorry to go, and she said goodbye. I thought she was sorry too; I thought she liked me, and I took off and went aboard the ship.”

“The ship took off, and we started north, up along the coast toward the Panama Canal, and I stood in the stern of the ship looking aft as Tocopilla diminished in the distance. It sounds like just a strange romantic story, but it has haunted me all my life. For heaven’s sake, it was 70 years ago, but I still think of it now.”

“Even though it was based on fact, I thought it would make such a good story that I wrote a movie skit for it and sent it down to this agent and tried to see if he could sell it. I thought it would make a beautiful movie, because it would show the ships and this beautiful little town and the scenery, but nobody ever looked twice at it.”

“I’m recording some music with my friend Kevin Boudreau. We call ourselves the Go For Broke Jazz Band. I’m going to sell CDs as well as e-books on my website, <www.jackvance.com>. I play harmonica, ukulele, and jug, and do vocals and play kazoo, and Kevin plays string bass and the washboard. Do you think anybody’s interested in buying Jack Vance music?”

“We used to have jam sessions around here all the time. I used to play professionally at two or three different places. If I was any good at playing cornet I wouldn’t be bashful about letting you know, but if I’m honest, I’m just barely able to play it.”

“My mother played piano. These people used to come stay with us, and one time they brought up this guy George Gould. He was a wonderful jazz musician, and had a wonderful orchestra in San Francisco. When I was nine years old I heard jazz music for the first time, and it’s haunted me all my life. Jazz puts dopamine in your brain. There are other things that send dopamine into your brain, including sex. I think if you’ve had a lot of fun in your life, it changes your brain. I’m serious about this. I think if you did some research, you’d discover that if you have a lot of fun, it keeps you young. That’s a theory of mine, and I don’t see any reason not to believe it’s true. Have as much fun as you can with your life. You see people going around that have bad things happen to them all their lives, and they are just dreary, and they die early.”

“I hope you don’t write in Locus what a ham I am. Say, ‘Jack Vance, he was nice to us. He’s not the worst guy in the world.’”

— Jack Vance

“The Genre Artist” — Carlo Rotella, New York Times Magazine, 2009

A summary and citation record for this profile, not a reproduction of it. The full text is copyrighted by The New York Times Company; only brief, clearly-attributed factual points are noted here. The complete article is held locally at interview/The Genre Artist - NYTimes.com.pdf.

Citation

Carlo Rotella, “The Genre Artist,” New York Times Magazine, 19 July 2009, p. MM20 of the New York print edition (pp. 20–25 as paginated in some citations). https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19Vance-t.html. Reprinted as the introduction to Humayoun Ibrahim’s graphic-novel adaptation of The Moon Moth (First Second, 2012) and, in German, in Jack Vance: Weltenschöpfer und Wortschmied, ed. Andreas Irle (2016), 391–404. Rotella interviewed Vance in person at his Oakland home in the winter of 2008–2009; the piece was occasioned by the publication of Vance’s memoir This Is Me, Jack Vance! and the tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, both released around the same time.

What it covers

A profile-and-interview hybrid making the literary case for Vance as an underrated prose stylist, built around: appreciations from Michael Chabon, Dan Simmons, Neil Gaiman, and Tanith Lee (each describing their own adolescent discovery of Vance’s prose); an account of the Vance Integral Edition and the Totality text-search tool; a description of Vance’s late-life circumstances (blindness, living arrangements, working with his son and caretaker); biographical background (Depression-era childhood, Berkeley, pulp influences, marriage, travel, and writing habits); and reflections on why Vance’s work resists easy critical placement between “genre” and “literary” categories.

New factual points for the research record

Already added to references/vance-life-and-works.md §1, with citations there:

• Childhood ranch location specified as “Little Dutch Slough” (previously only “near Oakley”).
• Vance skipped grades and entered high school very young.
• Son John Holbrook Vance II’s occupation: engineer.
• Composition method on travels: Vance wrote longhand on a clipboard; Norma typed successive drafts on a portable typewriter.
• Fan correspondence reportedly included letters from Ursula K. Le Guin, Paul Allen, and Gary Gygax (whose D&D magic system drew on the Dying Earth stories).
• Madeira added to the list of places Vance and Norma stayed while traveling/writing.
• Jeremy Cavaterra’s role as a live-in composer/caretaker in Vance’s final years.

Already on file before this pass

Several of the article’s most-cited points were already in the reference files from earlier research sessions and are not repeated here: the “one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices” framing; the Chabon and Simmons appreciations; the Rhoads/VIE/Totality account and the “punctilio” (33 uses) statistic; the clipboard/freighter-deck composition of the earliest Dying Earth stories; and Jeremy Cavaterra’s quote on Vance’s reticence about discussing his own technique.

Source tier

Journalism / secondary reference (per SKILL.md’s source tiers) for Rotella’s own framing and reporting; the passages quoting Vance directly are primary testimony, subject to the same caveats as any late-life recollection.

Composition Contexts: Where and When the Books Were Written

This page reconstructs, as far as the evidence allows, where and roughly when individual Vance titles were drafted — as opposed to when they were first published (for which see Vol. Contents). The main source is Jack Vance’s dictated autobiography, This Is Me, Jack Vance! (Gollancz/SF Gateway ebook, 2009; hereafter “the memoir”). Additional evidence comes from Cosmopolis #40–41 (July–August 2003), especially Norma Vance’s biographical essays and Chuck King’s report on the John Holbrook Vance Collection at Boston University’s Mugar Library. Cross-references to publication dates are drawn from VIE.md, which is itself sourced from ISFDB and the FictionMags Index.

This is a thin record, not a full bibliography-to-timeline mapping. The memoir is a “landscape,” in Vance’s own words, not a writing-shop diary — it names the specific composition setting for only a handful of titles out of his ~90-item bibliography. The Cosmopolis material adds valuable context, especially about childhood landscape, house-building, and surviving manuscript evidence, but it usually does not identify a specific title being written at a specific place. Resist the temptation to fill those gaps by inference from travel dates alone — a period of travel is not evidence that a specific book was written during it unless a source says so.

Confidence key

• 🟢 Stated directly — the memoir names the title and the place (and usually a rough time) together, explicitly.
• 🟡 Bounded by context — the place is explicit, but the date is inferred by chaining other explicit facts in the narrative (a preceding/following event’s date, a stated age, a book’s independently known publication date). Shown as ~year or a range.
• 🔴 External anchor only — not from the memoir; included only to orient the chart (e.g., a publication date from VIE.md, used as a boundary condition).
• 🟣 Manuscript-evidence context — physical manuscript/draft evidence identifies relationships among drafts, working titles, or writing order, but not necessarily the place of composition.

Visual timeline

timeline
    title Composition contexts named or bounded in the autobiography
    section 1943–1946 : Merchant Marine (various ships)
        1943 enlisted, S.U.P. ordinary seaman (🟢 stated) : Dying Earth stories drafted (🟢 stated, no ship/date given for which voyage) : "The Flesh Mask" (pub. as Take My Face) drafted (🟢 stated) : "Bird Island" (pub. as Isle of Peril) drafted (🟢 stated)
    section ~1946–1948 : Colton, CA (Norma's family home)
        Magnus Ridolph series begun, incl. Hard Luck Diggings (🟡 bounded by 1948 magazine date + post-marriage timing)
    section ~1948–early 1949 : Fulpmes, Tyrol, Austria
        Vandals of the Void started (🟢 place stated, 🟡 date inferred)
    section ~1951–1953 : Lake Chapala, Mexico
        Clarges (pub. as To Live Forever) begun, with Frank Herbert nearby (🟢 place stated, 🟡 date inferred)
    section 1965 : Paea, Tahiti
        "The Last Castle" written (🟢 stated directly; matches 1966 Galaxy pub. + 1966/67 Nebula/Hugo)
    section mid-1980s onward : Oakland, CA
        Glaucoma diagnosed after house completed (🟡 dated only as "mid-1980s") : "most of" Lyonesse dictated via computer thereafter (🟡 vague as to how much of the trilogy) : Cadwal Chronicles, Night Lamp, Ports of Call, Lurulu all written this way (🟢 stated directly, but as a block, not individually dated)
    section Manuscript evidence : Mugar Library / VIE research
        Four Johns draft pages survive partly on backs of Milton Hack from Zodiac and The Narrow Land drafts (🟣 Cosmopolis #41) : one early Palace of Love draft page found on back of Emphyrio draft (🟣 Cosmopolis #41)

(If this renders as plain text rather than a diagram, your Markdown viewer doesn’t have mermaid support enabled — mdbook-mermaid is not currently configured in this book’s book.toml.)

Detail table

Contextual influences that are not composition claims

These are important for “what context was around the writing,” but they are not evidence that any specific book was drafted at that place/time.

• Oakley / Iron House School / Delta landscape — Norma Vance says the move to the Oakley country ranch was, in Jack’s mind, “the single most important event in his life”; she explicitly states that he remembered the slough-edge school, dairy, orchards, eucalyptus/firs/shrubs/flowers/weeds, dun soil, and Mount Diablo view, and that he “remembered it all when writing his books” as a resource for “descriptive prose: of place, of mood, and sensation.” This is strong primary testimony for the childhood landscape as a lifelong descriptive reservoir, but not a claim about any one book. Source: Norma Vance, “A Jack Vance Biography,” Cosmopolis #40 (July 2003), pp. 1–3.
• Oakland house-building while writing — Norma Vance describes the Valley View property as a rustic house on three hillside lots, with Jack creating a building site by pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow; “all the while Jack made time to write.” She also describes him retreating to a self-dug fallout-shelter cave with a thermos, slingback chair, pillow/clipboard, fire and lantern to work when noise in the house made concentration difficult. This supports the general composition context “Oakland house under construction,” especially for the 1960s–70s, but no title is named. Source: Norma Vance, “A Different View of Jack Vance,” Cosmopolis #41 (Aug 2003), pp. 1–2.
• Early manuscript around 1953 — Cosmopolis #41 reproduces a photo captioned “Norma with an early manuscript, circa 1953.” Useful as visual/contextual evidence of the Vances’ working partnership and manuscript-handling, but the title of the manuscript is not identified in the caption. Source: Cosmopolis #41 (Aug 2003), p. 5.
• Houseboat date evidence — Norma Vance’s article captions a photograph “Houseboat with Albert Hall, Jack, Poul Anderson, circa 1962” and says the houseboat plan arose “when John was still a baby.” This is stronger evidence for a c. 1962 construction date than later recollections that put the houseboat in the mid/late 1960s or c. 1972, but it does not directly identify any fiction written aboard the houseboat. Source: Norma Vance, “A Different View of Jack Vance,” Cosmopolis #41 (Aug 2003), pp. 3–4.

A likely (but unverified) identification worth flagging

The memoir credits “Seven Exits from Bocz” to “The Chowder and Marching Science Fiction Society of Berkeley,” while VIE.md (via ISFDB/FictionMags) gives its first publication as The Rhodomagnetic Digest, v4 #2, 1952. These are probably the same venue under different names — The Rhodomagnetic Digest was the clubzine of a real Bay Area fan group historically known as “The Elves’, Gnomes’ and Little Men’s Science Fiction Chowder and Marching Society,” based in Berkeley — but that identification rests on background knowledge, not on a source re-checked in this session, so it should be verified before being promoted to vance-research-log.md as a settled fact.

NOTE: Wil Ceron was so kind to check this, as he owns a copy of the 1952 Rhodomagnetic Digest, and confirmed that it does indeed contain “Seven Exits from Bocz” by the Chowder and Marching Science Fiction Society of Berkeley. This is now verified. It is The Rhodomagnetic Digest, Volume IV, issue #21, number 2, 1952. “The Elves’, Gnomes’ and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder and Marching Society is composed of people who are interested in reading, writing, or collecting science fiction and fantasy in any of its forms.” - source: https://fanac.org/fanzines/Rhodomagnetic/Rhodomagnetic21-00.html

What this page deliberately does not claim

• No composition context is asserted for the Demon Princes, Planet of Adventure (Tschai), Alastor Cluster, Durdane, Cadwal individual volumes, Emphyrio, Big Planet, The Languages of Pao, the Cugel/Rhialto Dying Earth sequels, the mysteries (Joe Bain, Ellery Queen house-name books), or the vast majority of the short fiction — the memoir simply does not say where or when these were written, beyond the general working rhythm described in the Final Word (longhand at home with colored fountain pens; a single pen plus a portable typewriter, with Norma typing successive drafts, while traveling).
• The three explicit travel-era “we settled in and worked” passages that name no specific title (the 1969 European trip, the 1974 round-the-world trip’s three months on the houseboat “Bluebird” at Lake Nagin, Kashmir) are intentionally excluded from the table above, even though fan bibliographies sometimes associate that Kashmir stay with specific mid-1970s titles — the memoir itself does not make that link, so asserting it here would manufacture false precision.

Links

More to come…

About

This project is a work in progress, and is intended to serve as a resource for fans of Jack Vance’s work. The goal is to provide a comprehensive collection of information, links, and resources related to Jack Vance, his writings, and the community that surrounds his work.

Special thanks to the following individuals and organizations for their contributions and support:

• John Vance (Jack Vance’s son) for his support and encouragement in preserving his father’s legacy.
• Koen Vijverman (spatterlightpress.com) for his work in publishing and preserving Jack Vance’s works.
• Wil Ceron - for verifying and providing information on Jack Vance’s works and related materials on this site