The Four Johns / Four Men Called John (As Ellery Queen)
1964
Space Opera
1965
A Room to Die In (As Ellery Queen)
1965
The Blue World
1966
The Brains of Earth / Nopalgarth
1966
The Last Castle
1966
The Fox Valley Murders
1966
The Madman Theory (As Ellery Queen)
1966
The Pleasant Grove Murders
1967
Emphyrio
1969
The Deadly Isles
1969
Bad Ronald
1973
The Gray Prince / The Domains of Koryphon
1974
Maske: Thaery
1976
The View from Chickweed’s Window
1979
The House on Lily Street
1979
The Dark Ocean
1985
Night Lamp
1996
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
Future Tense
1964
The World Between and Other Stories
1965
Monsters in Orbit
1965
The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph
1966
Eight Fantasms and Magics
1969
The Worlds of Jack Vance
1973
The Best of Jack Vance
1976
Galactic Effectuator
1980
Lost Moons
1982
The Narrow Land
1982
The Augmented Agent and Other Stories
1986
The Dark Side of the Moon
1986
Chateau d’If and Other Stories
1990
When the Five Moons Rise
1992
The Jack Vance Treasury
2007
Wild Thyme, Green Magic
2009
Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One
2010
Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Two
2012
Magic Highways: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Three
2013
Minding the Stars: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Four
2014
Grand Crusades: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Five
2015
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
This Is Me, Jack Vance!
2009
About Jack Vance
Jack Vance (John Holbrook Vance, 1916 to 2013) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and mysteries. He is best known for the Dying Earth books, the Lyonesse trilogy and the Demon Princes series, and he also wrote crime novels under his full name and under pen names including Ellery Queen.
Vance was born in San Francisco on 28 August 1916 and spent much of his childhood on his grandfather’s ranch near Oakley in the Sacramento River delta. He studied mining engineering, physics, journalism and English at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1942, and went to sea with the Merchant Marine in 1943. He worked as a seaman, rigger, surveyor, ceramicist and carpenter before he could support himself by writing.
His first published story, “The World-Thinker”, appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1945. “The Dying Earth” (1950) collected fantasy stories he had written at sea; it is set in a far future where the sun is going out and magic and technology coexist. He returned to that setting with the adventures of the rogue Cugel the Clever in “The Eyes of the Overworld” and “Cugel’s Saga”, and with “Rhialto the Marvellous”.
From the 1960s most of his science fiction was set in the Gaean Reach, a region of space settled by humans. The five Demon Princes novels follow Kirth Gersen as he hunts the crime bosses who destroyed his village. The four Planet of Adventure books strand the scout Adam Reith on the planet Tschai. The Lyonesse trilogy, finished in 1989, is set on a mythical archipelago off the coast of France in the early Middle Ages.
Vance won Hugo Awards for “The Dragon Masters” and “The Last Castle”, which also took a Nebula, and an Edgar Award for the mystery “The Man in the Cage”. “Lyonesse: Madouc” won the World Fantasy Award in 1990. He received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984 and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1997. His thriller “Bad Ronald” became an ABC television film in 1974.
Although legally blind from the 1980s, Vance kept writing with specially written software. His last novel was “Lurulu” (2004), and his memoir “This Is Me, Jack Vance!” (2009) won a third Hugo. He died at home in Oakland, California, on 26 May 2013, aged 96.
