Quicknation    Jack Vance

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(b. August 28, 1916 in San Francisco, California; various alternative birthdates between 1916 and 1920 have been cited in different sources) is generally described as an American fantasy and science fiction author, though it has been reported that Vance himself objects to that label [1]. He writes chiefly under his informal name, b. In past years he wrote mysteries under his full formal name and also as Ellery Queen, Alan Wade, Peter Held, and John van See. He has won numerous awards and honors: Hugo Awards — in 1963 for i; the Jupiter Award in 1975; the World Fantasy Award in 1984 for life achievement and in 1990 for i; in 1990 he was named a SFWA Grand Master; and in 1992 he was Guest of Honor at the WorldCon in Orlando, Florida. He is generally highly regarded by critics and colleagues, some of whom have suggested that he transcends genre labels and should be regarded as an important writer by mainstream standards. For instance, Poul Anderson once called him the greatest living American writer "in" science fiction (not "of" science fiction). Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson were among Vance's closest friends in the SF community.

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Vance's grandfather supposedly arrived in California from Michigan a decade before the Gold Rush and married a San Francisco girl. (Early family records were apparently destroyed in the fire following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake). Vance grew up on a ranch in the area of the San Joaquin Valley round the delta of the Sacramento River and was an avid reader of the popular adventure-oriented pulp fiction of the 1920s. He left high school early and worked for some years as a construction worker, bell-hop, in a cannery and on a dredger before entering the University of California, Berkeley where over a six-year period he majored in mining engineering and also studied physics, journalism and English, but took time off to work as an electrician in the naval shipyards at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He graduated in 1942 and did war service as a seaman in the Merchant Marine. Contrary to a tenacious legend, he was NOT torpedoed twice... not even once. This was probably invented in the early days by an editor to enhance Vance's attraction in a blurb... See the interview in Cosmopolis #39 June 2003. In later years blue water sailing remained one of his favourite recreations; and ships, boats and sea voyages are frequently encountered in his novels and stories. Later he worked as a carpenter. At university and afterwards he was active in jazz bands as a horn player, and his first published writings were reviews of jazz concerts, as a columnist for i) to the world of his classic short story 'The Moon Moth', whose inhabitants converse in elaborately prescribed modes of song, accompanying themselves on hand-held keyed percussion instruments.

In 1946 Vance met and married Norma Ingold. During the 1950s he travelled extensively in Europe. He has lived most of his adult life in the hills above Oakland, California. He began his full-time writing career in the late 1940s, the period in which the San Francisco Renaissance--a broad movement of experimentation in literature and the arts (ranging from poetry through architecture)--was in its early stages. Vance's own references to Bay Area bohemian life (directly in his early mysteries and in disguised form in his science-fiction novels) suggest affinities with this movement although not with its beat-generation subdivision. Certainly Vance's "Sailmaker Beach," the bohemian quarter of Avente on the planet Alphanor, is an overlay of San Francisco's North Beach, while the mad poet Navarth is said to be based on Kenneth Rexroth. Although Vance has become legally blind in his old age, he continues to write with the aid of special software, his most recent novel being the whimsical Lurulu.

He first ventured into print as a science-fiction author with the story 'The World-Thinker' in 1945. Since then he has written over sixty books. Many fall into series: perhaps the most notable are the four-book i fantasy trilogy; but there are others. Many of Vance's science-fiction series belong to a large vision of man's future called the i, occurring at various times in that future history, but the connections are not significant to understanding each individual series (though they allow Vance the opportunity to use in one series delightful references to certain persons, such as Navarth, the mad poet, and certain imagined books, such as the multi-volume study i by Baron Bodissey, mentioned in others).

Vance's science fiction and fantasy novels are typically straightforward, linear narratives, which can easily seduce a careless reader into mistaking them for space opera, which they are not. (For Vance's idea of space opera, see his novel Space Opera.) Vance's tales characteristically feature a strong protagonist — sometimes strong by nature, sometimes forced to strength by circumstance — in quiet but tense opposition to an enfeebled society that he eventually redeems, often without its plaudits or even its notice. Others — a minority, but an important one in his oeuvre — display anti-heroes (such as the ironically mistitled 'Cugel the Clever' in his i tales) receiving the slings and arrows of what they — but not we — regard as outrageous fortune. Vance's works by and large are, under the hood, morality plays, howsoever subtle. Yet even a cut-throat, a trickster and a robber, suitably chastised by his vicissitudes, may finally triumph, as Cugel does in the sequel to i series of fantasy novels constitute the exception to these rules; they are much more complexly plotted, intercutting the affairs of several different protagonists.

But the chief attractions of Vance's novels are not their linear plots, but Vance's exquisite and bone-dry ironic language and his rich evocation — often in but a few words — of alien, complex, absurd, yet thoroughly human societies. Vance often creates in what amounts to a throwaway paragraph a world more fully realized than many writers manage in an entire doorstop-thick volume. An example of his inventiveness is his creation of several fictional games which feature in some of his novels, notably Hussade in the i.

Another of Vance's special talents is the telling of tales-within-tales by use of chapter-heading quotations (notably, in the i) and footnotes (the ability of a novelist to use footnotes as an effective component is rare, indeed close to unique, though it can be paralleled in the work of Flann O'Brien, especially i). Often, Vance exposes the rather arbitrary nature of society by means of linguistic footnotes on untranslatable terms. These terms outline concepts central to the society described, but utterly alien to the reader. Indeed, Vance's ability to "explain" without diminishing the reader's mystification is part of the charm of his works, which are rich in the "Negative Capability" lauded by Keats and essential to fantasy or science fiction. The fact that one never quite figures out what a "deodand" looks like, or has never heard of the Flesh Cape of Miscus, in no way impairs one's ability to follow the story.

A commonplace in Vance's works is the village (or planet) whose inhabitants practice with utmost sincerity a belief system which is absurd, repugnant, or both. Besides their picaresque potential, Vance uses these episodes to satirize dogmatism in general and religious dogmatism in particular. Indeed, there is a great deal of the 18th-century i trilogy pokes particular fun at Christianity. Where so many peoples over the aeons have held so many disparate beliefs, Vance implies, who has the right to impose his dogma on others? But, in one of paradoxes so typical for Vance, nearly all his heroes are engaged in exactly that - they are constantly forcing their convictions on others, and tend to answer questions about their right to do so with a swordstroke or projac-blast. They are not interested, however, in promoting religious beliefs, but in basic honesty and ethical behaviour.

This skepticism is tied to Vance's individualism, which is both an ethical and an aesthetic imperative for him and his characters. Thoreau's desire that there be as many different sorts of person as possible seems to be applied in practice in Vance's fiction. His Enlightenment values appear again in his assumption that everyone should be free to realize himself in his own manner, provided that this self-realization doesn't act to the detriment of others. Often Vance's villains are self-artists who violate that principle and destroy the lives or property of others in order to pursue their own visions.

Consequently, Vance favors aristocratic characters for the scope that status or wealth can undeniably provide, and he enjoys creating freakishly indivdualistic aristocratic societies (such as in the second i) is the decadent aristocratic society whose pursuit of aesthetic individualism has left it unable to cope with the challenges of reality, which may require cooperation and sacrifice. This tension recurs in Vance, though usually his protagonists find it possible to be both aesthetes and heroes.

But Vance never assumes that aristocracy automatically confers merit. He is ruthless in his satire of pompous notables who think that noble birth saves them the obligation to be gracious or interesting. Pretension is always a vice in Vance. But he always distinguishes between pretension and actual elevation. One of the many charms of his work is the Shakespearean manner in which scoundrels and princes alike bargain and banter in elegant language.

His emphasis on individualism prevents Vance from being a relativist. Indeed, his values sometimes have the force of prejudices, as with his disdain for homosexuality: the few homosexuals in Vance's work are all villains, principally King Casmir of Lyonesse, Faude Carfilhiot and the wizard Tamurello, all from the Lyonesse trilogy. This sexual conservatism also manifests itself in male-female relations. Nevertheless Vance has created lively and heroic female characters, such as Glyneth in the i books; after Glyneth marries, she drops offstage for the last book in that trilogy, but is replaced by another strong female character, Madouc. Further examples of female protagonists quite as capable as their male equivalents may be found in, among other titles, i and the short story "Assault on a City", which also features one of Vance's nastier male villains. A Dying Earth story, "The Murthe," is especially explicit in insisting that women's and men's natures are different and that any deviations from one's gender norm are to be avoided.

Whether this genial but undeniable sexism is an artifact of Vance's generational prejudices or the result of his clear-sighted vision of the reality hidden below the latest creeds and fads, must be decided by each reader according to his or her own views (or prejudices). Either way, it shouldn't detract from an enjoyment of his lively and imagination - except for those who read only to find, like Tolkien's hobbits, a confirmation of what they thought before. Such readers should beware, since Vance's books invariably include scenes designed to challenge nearly each comfortable worldview- religious, pacifistic, vegetarian, feminist and misogynist, progressive and traditional.

Vance has spoken of his fondness for the writings of P.G. Wodehouse and a certain influence of Wodehouse can be discerned in some of Vance's writings, especially in his portrayals of overbearing aunts and their easily intimidated nephews. The Wodehouse influence, however, may not be as pronounced as that of L. Frank Baum (see Baum's Vance-like use of stilted dialogue for comic effect in i). Whatever the relative weight of these and other models, Vance has proven himself a master of episodic farce in such works as i and the short story, "The Kokod Warriors." In an interview published in 1986, he stated that 'the best way to teach someone to be a writer is to force them to read twenty books I would set out for them': he then names, in addition to Wodehouse and Baum, only Cervantes's Don Quixote, Kenneth Grahame's i ('my favourite book - I don't know of anything more clutching for the imagination'). He has, in fact, no clear ancestor in English-language fiction, but some intriguing parallels in tone, language, narrative structure and character could be drawn with the novels of Thomas Love Peacock and James Branch Cabell. Similarities can also be discerned in some of the writings of Washington Irving, who had a Vance-like fascination with rogue personalities and an ability to describe their competition and machinations in arch language and with a wry humor.

The mystery novels of Vance are chiefly valuable today for what they reveal about his evolution as a science-fiction and fantasy writer (he stopped working in the mystery genre in the early 1970s except for science-fiction mysteries--see below). i is especially noteworthy for its portrayal of a trial-run version of what is perhaps Vance's greatest character--Howard Alan Treesong of i reveals, in its portrayal of Tahiti in the 1960s, some of the secret ingredients of master chef Vance's ability to cook up alien worlds with virtually no effort. The award-winning i is a classic 'locked-room' murder mystery featuring a strong-willed young woman as the amateur detective. In addition, the two Sheriff Joe Bain mysteries--and especially i--can still be read with pleasure, although more for the delightful California characters (such as Bain's New Age girl friend Luna) than for the actual crime investigations. i, about a hotel on an island off the California coast, is perhaps the nearest thing in his output to outright farce.

Vance has produced more successful mysteries set within his science-fiction universe. Most notable among these mixed-genre efforts are the "Galactic Effectuator" novelettes featuring Miro Hetzel, a Sam Spade type character, and the recent i An early 1950s short story series features Magnus Ridolph, an interstellar adventurer and amateur detective (based in part on Leslie Charteris' Simon Templar - but elderly and not prone to knocking anyone down) whose exploits are partly inspired by Jack London's South Seas tales.

For most of his career Vance's work suffered the vicissitudes common to most writers in his chosen field: ephemeral publication of stories in magazine form, short-lived softcover editions, insensitive editing beyond his control. As he became more widely recognized conditions improved, and his works became internationally renowned among aficionados. Much of his work has been translated into several languages.

A remarkable project, the Vance Integral Edition, a volunteer, nonprofit effort, has collected all of Vance's work into a uniform set of volumes, with the intention of scrupulously restoring Vance's works to their original texts. The VIE editors returned to manus, when available, or compared published editions, and usually hundreds of restorations were made in a typical novel. VIE editorial processes and results are discussed extensively in Cosmopolis, the project monthly publication, available on the VIE site. The VIE books are crucial for properly appreciating Vance. The VIE set presents the totality of his work (minus the 3 Ellery Queen novels, which, in corrected texts, are available in a supplemental VIE volume). Many of Vance's texts are difficult to acquire. The VIE also includes some important unpublished texts, such as 'Wild Thyme and Violets', and 'STARK', a plan for a series of novels about a generational star ark.

The Vance Integral Edition project, which has published all of Vance's work in an edition of 44 volumes, a PDF monthly about the Vance Integral Edition project. The 62 issues of 'Cosmopolis' are a good source of articles about Vance's work. See also 'Extant', another VIE related pdf magazine, which can be reached on the VIE site 'links' page. 'Extant' began publication about the time Cosmopolis left off, and there is some overlap in its contributors and readers.