Vance made his debut in print with "The World-Thinker", a 16-page story published by
Sam Merwin in
Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1945. Vance wrote many science fiction short stories in the late 1940s and through the 1950s, which were published in magazines. Most of his novels written during this period were mysteries, but a few were science fiction. 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 (
Vance Integral Edition), and three books published under the
Ellery Queen pseudonym. Some of these are not mysteries, such as
Bird Isle, 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. Many themes important to his more famous science fiction novels appeared first in the mysteries. The most obvious is the "book of dreams", which appears in
Bad Ronald and ''The View from Chickweed's Window
, prior to being featured in The Book of Dreams. The revenge theme is also more prominent in certain mysteries than in the science fiction (The View from Chickweed's Window
in particular). Bad Ronald
was adapted to a TV film of the same name aired on ABC in 1974, as well as a French production (Méchant garçon
) in 1992; this and Man in the Cage'' are the only works by Vance to be made into film to date. ''. Certain of the science fiction stories are also mysteries, penned using his full name John Holbrook Vance, three under the house
pseudonym Ellery Queen, and one each using the pseudonyms Alan Wade, Peter Held, John van See, and Jay Kavanse. Some editions of his published works give his year of birth as 1920. In addition to the comic Magnus Ridolph stories, two major stories feature the effectuator Miro Hetzel, a futuristic detective, and
Araminta Station is largely concerned with solving various murders. Vance returned to the "dying Earth" setting (a far distant future in which the sun is slowly going out, and magic and technology coexist) to write the
picaresque adventures of the ne'er-do-well scoundrel
Cugel the Clever, and those of the magician
Rhialto the Marvellous. These books were written in 1963, 1978 and 1981. His other major fantasy work,
Lyonesse (a trilogy comprising ''Suldrun's Garden
, The Green Pearl, and Madouc''), was completed in 1989 and set on a mythological archipelago off the coast of France in the early
Middle Ages. Vance's stories written for pulps in the 1940s and 1950s covered many
science fiction themes, with a tendency to emphasize mysterious and biological themes (ESP, genetics, brain parasites, body switching, other dimensions, cultures) rather than technical ones. Robots, for example, are almost entirely absent, though the short story "The Uninhibited Robot" features a computer gone awry. Many of the early stories are comic. By the 1960s, Vance had developed a futuristic setting that he came to call the
Gaean Reach, a fictional region of space settled by humans. Thereafter, all his science fiction was, more or less explicitly, set therein.
Literary influences '', illustrated by
Alex Schomburg. Under the title "Dust of Far Suns", it became the title piece in a Vance story collection in 1981. When asked about literary influences, Vance most often cited
Jeffery Farnol, a writer of adventure books, whose style of "high" language he mentions (the Farnol title
Guyfford of Weare being a typical instance);
P. G. Wodehouse, an influence apparent in Vance's taste for overbearing aunts; and
L. Frank Baum, whose fantasy elements were directly borrowed by Vance (see
The Emerald City of Oz). In the introduction to Dowling and Strahan's
The Jack Vance Treasury, Vance mentions that his childhood reading including
Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Jules Verne,
Robert W. Chambers, science fiction published by
Edward Stratemeyer, the magazines
Weird Tales and
Amazing Stories, and
Lord Dunsany. Fantasy historian Lin Carter notes several probable lasting influences of Cabell on Vance's work, and suggests that the early "pseudo-Cabell" experiments bore fruit in
The Dying Earth (1950). Science fiction critic Don Herron cites
Clark Ashton Smith as an influence on Vance's style and characters' names.
Characteristics and commentary Vance's science fiction runs the gamut from stories written for pulps in the 1940s to multi-volume tales set in the space age. Scott Bradfield states that Vance "wrote about incomprehensibly far-off futures that weren’t driven by the splashy intergalactic military conflicts of his Golden Age predecessors, such as E.E. Doc Smith or Robert A. Heinlein. Instead, Vance’s futures are marked by rich, panoramic socioeconomic systems." While Vance's stories have a wide variety of temporal settings, a majority of them belong to a period long after humanity has colonized other stars, culminating in the development of a fictional region of interstellar space called the
Gaean Reach. In its early phase, exhibited by the Oikumene of the
Demon Princes series, this expanding, loose and pacific agglomerate has an aura of colonial adventure, commerce, and exoticism. Later it becomes peace-loving and stolidly middle class. Vance's stories are seldom concerned directly with war and the conflicts are rarely direct. If there are battles, such as in the slave revolt against the nobility at the end of
The Last Castle, they are depicted in an abbreviated length, as Vance is more interested in the social and political context than the clashing of swords. Sometimes at the edges of the Reach or in the lawless areas of Beyond, a planet is menaced or craftily exploited. Some more extensive battles are described in
The Dragon Masters,
The Miracle Workers, and the
Lyonesse Trilogy, in which medieval-style combat abounds. His characters usually become inadvertently enmeshed in low-intensity conflicts between alien cultures; this is the case in
Emphyrio, the
Tschai series, the Durdane series, and the comic stories in
Galactic Effectuator, featuring Miro Hetzel. Personal, cultural, social, or political conflicts are the central concerns. This is most particularly the case in the Cadwal series, though it is equally characteristic of the three Alastor books,
Maske: Thaery, and, one way or another, in most of his science fiction novels. Another way in which Vance expands the usually narrow focus of most speculative fiction writers is the extensive details ranging from the culture of language to food, music, and rituals. In
The Languages of Pao, after a planet with a passive, lazy and backwards culture is invaded and occupied, the planet's leader orders three new languages developed, to make his people more aggressive, industrious and inventive. In the short story "
The Moon Moth", natives must master a number of musical instruments in order to communicate with each other. Spoken words are modulated to acquire different meanings, or may be said to be given full meaning (respect, derision or sarcasm), by means of the musical sounds. These details paint a far more detailed and complex picture of life and cultures in his books. The "Joe Bain" stories (
The Fox Valley Murders,
The Pleasant Grove Murders, and an unfinished outline published by the VIE) are set in an imaginary northern California county; these are the nearest to the classical mystery form, with a rural policeman as protagonist.
Bird Isle, by contrast, is not a mystery at all, but a Wodehousian idyll (also set near San Francisco), while
The Flesh Mask or
Strange People ... emphasize psychological drama. The theme of both
The House on Lily Street and
Bad Ronald is solipsistic megalomania, taken up again in the Demon Princes cycle of science fiction novels. Three books published under the
house name Ellery Queen were written to editorial requirements and heavily revised by the publisher. (Volume 45 of The Vance Integral Edition contains the original text for the three Ellery Queen novels. Vance previously refused to acknowledge them for their degree of rewriting.) Four others reflect Vance's world travels:
Strange People, Queer Notions based on his stay in Positano, Italy;
The Man in the Cage, based on a trip to Morocco;
The Dark Ocean, set on a merchant marine vessel; and
The Deadly Isles, based on a stay in
Tahiti. The mystery novels reveal much about Vance's 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.
Bad Ronald is especially noteworthy for its portrayal of a trial-run for Howard Alan Treesong of
The Book of Dreams. The Edgar-Award-winning
The Man in the Cage is a thriller set in North Africa at around the period of the French-Algerian war.
A Room to Die In is a classic 'locked-room' murder mystery featuring a strong-willed young woman as the amateur detective.
Bird Isle, a mystery set at a hotel on an island off the California coast, reflects Vance's taste for farce. Vance's two rural Northern California mysteries featuring
Sheriff Joe Bain were well received by the critics.
The New York Times said of
The Fox Valley Murders: "Mr. Vance has created the county with the same detailed and loving care with which, in the science fiction he writes as Jack Vance, he can create a believable alien planet."
Dorothy B. Hughes, in
The Los Angeles Times, wrote that it was "fat with character and scene". As for the second Bain novel,
The New York Times said: "I like regionalism in American detective stories, and I enjoy reading about the problems of a rural county sheriff ... and I bless John Holbrook Vance for the best job of satisfying these tastes with his wonderful tales of Sheriff Joe Bain ...". Vance has also written mysteries set in his science fiction universes. An early 1950s short story series features Magnus Ridolph, an interstellar adventurer and amateur detective who is elderly and not prone to knocking anyone down, and whose exploits appear to have been inspired, in part, by those of
Jack London's South Seas adventurer, Captain David Grief. The "Galactic Effectuator" novelettes feature Miro Hetzel, a figure who resembles Ridolph in his blending of detecting and troubleshooting (the "effectuating" indicated by the title). A number of the other science fiction novels include mystery, spy thriller, or crime-novel elements:
The Houses of Iszm,
Son of the Tree, the Alastor books
Trullion and
Marune, the Cadwal series, and large parts of the Demon Princes series. According to writer
Michael Chabon, "Jack Vance is the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don’t get the credit they deserve. If ‘The Last Castle’ or ‘The Dragon Masters’ had the name
Italo Calvino on it, or just a foreign name, it would be received as a profound meditation, but because he's Jack Vance and published in
Amazing Whatever, there's this insurmountable barrier." Vance fans developed a website called Totality (pharesm.org), which enables users to do electronic searches of the Vance Integral Edition texts. == Publication ==