Jack Vance

Jack (John Holbrook) Vance (San Francisco, August 28, 1916 - Oakland, May 26, 2013) was an American mystery, fantasy, and science fiction author. Most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance. Vance has published 11 mysteries as John Holbrook Vance and three as Ellery Queen. Other pen names (each used only once) included Alan Wade, Peter Held, John van See, and Jay Kavanse.

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 lifetime 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 an SFWA Grand Master. 

A 2009 New York Times Magazine profile described Vance as "one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices." Since his first published story, "The World-Thinker" (in Thrilling Wonder Stories), in 1945, Vance has written over sixty books. His work has been published in three categories: science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. Among Vance’s earliest published work is a set of fantasy stories written while he served in the merchant marine during the war. 

They appeared in 1950, several years after Vance had started publishing science fiction in pulp magazines under the title The Dying Earth. (Vance’s original title, used for the Vance Integral Edition, is Mazirian the Magician.) Vance wrote many science fiction short stories in the late 1940s and through the 1950s, which were published in magazines. A few of his novels written during this period were science fiction, but most were mysteries. 

Few were published at the time, but Vance continued to write mysteries into the early 1970s. In total, he wrote 15 novels outside of science fiction and fantasy, including the extended outline, The Telephone was Ringing in the Dark, published only by the VIE. Three books were published under the Ellery Queen pseudonym. Some of these are not mysteries, for example, Bird Island, and many fit uneasily in the category. These stories are set in and around his native San Francisco, except for one set in Italy and another in Africa. Two begin in San Francisco but take to the sea.