Jack Vance

John Holbrook Vance, known as Jack Vance (San Francisco, 1916 – Oakland, 2013), was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery fiction. He published under several pen names, including Peter Held and Alan Wade, and wrote three mystery novels under the Ellery Queen name. His first stories appeared in pulp magazines in the mid-1940s, and his output eventually exceeded sixty books.

He grew up in San Francisco and then, after his parents separated, on his maternal grandparents' ranch near Oakley in the Sacramento River delta. There he read his mother's large book collection, which included Verne and Burroughs, and the pulp magazines he found at the local drugstore. The death of his grandfather, during the Great Depression, left the family in financial trouble, and Vance worked many jobs before enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley.

He worked as an electrician at Pearl Harbor and left the job about a month before the Japanese attack. He then joined the Merchant Marine after memorizing an eye chart to pass the vision test. In the 1950s he wrote scripts for the television series Captain Video and spent long periods travelling in Europe, Ireland, Tahiti, and Kashmir, places where he wrote many of his stories and novels.

His style is known for dry irony and for suggesting strange, alien, yet recognisably human beings in only a few sentences. He enjoyed stories within stories, footnotes, and glossaries of untranslatable terms that readers piece together without being spelled out. His recurring themes include individualism, scepticism toward religious dogma, and the critique of decadent aristocracies that cannot face practical problems.

His legacy is considerable. He won the Edgar Award in 1961 for best first mystery novel, and two Hugo Awards, for The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle, which also earned him the Nebula. In 1997 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him a Grand Master, and in 2001 he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Later writers, including George R. R. Martin, have cited him as a major influence.