First a confession: I’m a hopeless Jack Vance fan. So everything you read here should be taken in that context. I consider Jack Vance one of the greatest science fiction writers ever. But Vance is much more than a genre writer. I firmly believe we’ll see Jack Vance volumes in the Library of America someday just like Philip K. Dick and H. P. Lovecraft. This Subterranean Press book collects stories Vance published between 1948 to 1959. Some stories, frankly, are better than others. But, Vance was learning his craft during these years so I find it fascinating to see the growth from story to story. Here’s the Table of Contents:
* Introduction
* Hard-Luck Diggings (1948)
* The Temple of Han (1951)
* The Masquerade on Dicantropus (1951)
* Abercrombie Station (1952)
* Three-Legged Joe (1953)
* DP! (1953)
* Shape-Up (1953)
* Sjambak (1953)
* The Absent-Minded Professor (1954)
* When the Five Moons Rise (1954)
* The Devil on Salvation Bluff (1955)
* Where Hesperus Falls (1956)
* The Phantom Milkman (1956)
* Dodkin’s Job (1959)
“Just” a “genre” writer? You see where this foolishness leads us? No one need apologize for Jack Vance, one of the most elegant and cooly ironic of writers, like Fritz Leiber before and along with him (and Avram Davidson after and along with him) one of the most brilliant stylists and most brilliant commenters on the human condition to grace fantastic fiction, and sometimes crime fiction as well. And, like Oates and Wilhelm and Emshwiller, and Leiber and Davidson, he has never let “genre” (koff) distinctions hem him in any way. Gene Wolfe is in this crew, too…and my old friend A. A. Attanasio…and William Kotzwinkle…and Vance’s model, whom he improved on (much as Leiber so vastly improved on Lovecraft and Heinlein), Clark Ashton Smith.
Sadly, those genre labels stick, Todd. Who is reprinting Jack Vance? A small science fiction press. When Knopf or Random House start reprinting Vance, you’ll know his status has changed.
You’re a Jack Vance fan, and me too. here in spain some of his works are published. And many of them are out of print from many, many years ago 🙁 Vance is one of the reasons why i started to read english. i was tired of wait for translations or new editions of his books.
By the way. many persons praise The Dying Earth as his best work, but forgot another great vancian series: Tschai. Which is honest and says the truth: is the Planet of Adventure.
I love the PLANET OF ADVENTURE series, Deka! I consider THE DYING EARTH Vance’s masterpiece, but he produced many fine works like THE LAST CASTLE and THE DRAGON MASTERS. I’m impressed that you learned English in order to read Jack Vance!
Good to see these early stories (which I haven’t read) available. I think you’re right about the Library of America. Hey, they could do a lot worse (and have)!
😉
If the LIBRARY OF AMERICA can make money off of Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick, then Jack Vance volumes loom in the future, Jeff.
Pretty sad that I am only familiar with the one that became a Disney Fred MacMurray movie.
Loved Fred MacMurray’s work with Disney, Patti.
It’s funny, the first things I knew Fred MacMurray for were MY THREE SONS and the Disney movies. It was years before I knew he had done DOUBLE INDEMNITY.
Yes, Fred MacMurray had a hard-boiled side, Jeff. He was great in DOUBLE INDEMNITY.
Me, too. Jeff. Couldn’t believe it was the same guy.
Most people know Fred MacMurray from MY THREE SONS and his Disney stuff, Patti. They don’t know about his noirish side.
I found FMc unconvincing in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, in a way that I didn’t, say, with Reagan in the budget THE KILLERS.
Btw, I don’t believe “The Absent-Minded Professor” cited above is the source of the Disney film series…or if so, IMDb managed to miss it…
(a number of real sf writers contributed scripts to CAPTAIN VIDEO, that star of the DuMont Network firmament…perhaps part of why it was so fondly remembered. And it paid well, by the standards of fiction writing…)
Writer:
Bad Ronald (1992) (novel “Bad Ronald”)
… aka “Méchant garçon” – France (original title)
Bad Ronald (1974) (TV) (novel)
“Thriller” (1 episode, 1961)
– Man in the Cage (1961) TV episode (story)
“Captain Video and His Video Rangers” (2 episodes, 1953)
… aka “Captain Video” – USA (alternative title)
– Black Planet Academy (1953) TV episode (writer) (as Jack Vance)
– Adventure on Phobos (1953) TV episode (writer) (as Jack Vance)
Jack Vance published a mystery/suspense novel titled MAN IN A CAGE, Todd. I wonder if it’s the novelization of that THRILLER episode.
Yes, George, the snobbery and foolishness might stick, but we don’t have to freshen the glue…
I have faith that Jack Vance will be taken up by the same audience that found Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick, Todd. Of course, Lovecraft and Dick were helped by Hollywood. So far, Hollywood hasn’t discovered Vance.
1. The cover looks like it should be for “The Temple of Han”, not “Hard Luck Diggins”.
2. Not being quite the Vance fan you are, George, I’ll settle for the greatest hits, as the saying goes.
Yikes. This looks good. Tried some Vance sci-fi long ago after reading a couple of his mysteries, and was not disappointed.
I consider Jack Vance one of the great writers of the 20th Century, Evan. And this new Subterranean Press edition is attractively packaged.
You have that backward, George…the THRILLER episode, one of the most unusual of its suspense episodes, is an adaptation of the (John Holbrook) Vance novel. As were the two versions of BAD RONALD. Film people often try to not have imagination, given how producers and other backers Like Sure Things.
Dick came to his current prominence in part due to his talent and obsessions and in part due to the drumbeat led by Paul Williams back in his CRAWDADDY and ROLLING STONE days…Williams even got a new Dick story into a special issue of ROLLING STONE, a COLLEGE PAPERS issue. Then on to Ridley Scott and those lesser efforts that followed. Lovecraft likewise would be pretty obscure, I think, if not for the strenuous efforts of August Derleth, and the (greater artistic) successes of HPL acolytes such as Robert Bloch and Frita Leiber, Ramsey Campbell and Fred Chappell, Thomas Ligotti and TED Klein…though, oddly enough, the one writer that NIGHT GALLERY consistently handled well in adaptation was HPL…they even managed to punt the eminently theatrical Leiber. But most other HPL on film, until very recently, has been dire. The comics and Brian Lumley’s work (as with Derleth, his non-Lovecraftian work is so much better) haven’t hurt…nor the often good to brilliant ideas buried in so often awful prose.
I’ve been disappointed in Brian Lumley’s approach to Lovecraft, Todd. He explains too much which drains all the mystery and suspense out of his stories. And, you’re right: authors need supporters who promote their work and keep it alive after the writer is gone. I do my minor role of Jack Vance Supporter by reviewing on this blog every new Jack Vance book that’s published.
You want to talk about acquired tastes, George…
I mentioned that Avram Davidson is an acquired taste because I’ve recommended his work and found about 50% love him and 50% say “Ho-hum.”
George, I was just thinking it’d been too long a while between Vance entries here.
Just out of curiosity, have you tried to expand the literary horizons of your students, and get them to read artists like Vance and Smith? Or would that be an inappropriate thing to do?
Good question, Drongo! I have used books by Dickens (BLEAK HOUSE and HARD TIMES), Pohl & Kornbluth (THE SPACE MERCHANTS), and numerous non-fiction books as “enrichment” materials in my courses. I’m tempted to use Jack Vance and Clark Ashton Smith in future courses.
Lumley forcing HPL into a Boy’s Adventure context, Derleth into a Christian allegory…one wonders why they’d chose to do so, but I suppose they both found audiences thus.
A 50-50 ratio isn’t too bad, with a writer of any ambition or eccentricity at all about her or his work.
Ah, but the trick is to recommend quirky, ambitious, and eccentric books to the Right People, Todd. As David Hume said, “It’s all a matter of taste.”
I am also a huge Vance fan. I just received the first two volumes of the compact Vance Integral Edition from Afton House Books. They were printed in Milan, and they are awesome. 6 volumes in all for a complete collection of Vance’s works.
I have been tempted by the compact Integral Edition, Aaron. I may have to open the wallet…
I was unfortunately introduced to Vance at an early age with the unlikeable novelette “Gateway to Otherness”, though a couple years later a reprint of “The Dying Earth” almost made up for that. Vance was GoH at a convention in the Netherlands when I was living there, and let me tell you, the Dutch are crazy about him. I think you might find more in print there than here, albeit in Dutch translation.
I’m hoping the LIBRARY OF AMERICA issues a Jack Vance volume, Karl. They did it for Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick.
Not likely. Vance has practically no out-of-genre recognition. Though things do change. When I was growing up I was embarrassed asking booksellers if they had any Lovecraft, as it sounded like some sort of erotica. Esoteric, practically out-of-print writers known only to genre mavens included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and J.R.R. Tolkien. And I never heard of Dick before he got the Hugo for The Man in the High Castle and armed with that knowledge got my local library to order a copy. So I suppose it is not impossible that something like that could happen with Vance, but I can think of a lot of more likely Library of America sf writers, Heinlein being the most obvious, and perhaps James Tiptree Jr.
The Philip K. Dick volumes made the Library of America Big Bucks, Karl. I’m sure their Lovecraft volume sold well, too. So I’m guessing more SF writers will find their way into the Library of America offerings.