by Jack Vance
On occasion I read Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler and John Dickson Carr, although I have certain reservations about these authors. Chandler, for instance, while obviously a master of his craft, makes overuse of simile, to my annoyance.
Police procedurals leave me cold, although I have found that the work of the English John Creasey, writing as J. J. Marric, can be entertaining.
Chapter 13
And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving,
Than do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men’s believing.
Ezra Pound
Needless to say, I am very proud of my son John; I admire his many capabilities. I consider myself rather versatile, but John is even more so. His profession is what I shall call creative engineering; his craftsmanship is far superior to mine and he can construct or build anything he sets his mind to. At one time he played the piano with great élan, but various distractions drew him away from this pastime. He has a pilot’s license, and when we owned our 45’ ketch, the Hinano, with the south Pacific in mind, he learned celestial navigation using a sextant to take star sights and so derive latitude and longitude. This system is now of course obsolete owing to the universal use of GPS technology.
Unlike his father, John is rather handsome. He is easygoing, casual, and makes a good impression upon almost everyone with whom he comes in contact. In 1996 he married Tammy (née Tomara) Young, a charming young lady: blonde, slender, with a pleasant disposition. Norma and I came to love her as if she were our own daughter.
In due course Tammy and John produced two children: first Alison (1997), then Glen (1999). But in 2005 a great tragedy came upon us. Tammy suffered a stroke and was taken to the hospital, where daily she became less coherent and less aware, until finally she lapsed into a coma. John sat by the bed night and day and was with her when she died. I need say no more of this event.
Time passed. Alison and Glen, owing as much to good parenting as to the natural resiliency of youth, have remained sprightly and full of fun: delightful grandchildren.
One day Bill Schulz came to call. He is a mathematics professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Bill brought along with him his two teenaged daughters: Alexia and Danae, both lively, pretty girls.
More time passed. We visited Bill and his family in Flagstaff, and on several occasions they visited us at our home in Oakland, while the girls became young ladies, and pursued Ph.D. degrees, Danae at UC Berkeley and Alexia at Harvard. Alexia has made her mark in astrophysics and Danae in molecular biology.
Bill and the two girls were often at our house. In due course, Alexia completed her Ph.D. and the next thing I knew—John and she were making long-range plans together.
Early in 2008, Norma’s health began to weaken seriously. John returned to Oakland, with the children, to be close to his mother during what would be her last days. She passed away quietly one evening, at home with her family.
Following her graduation, Alexia accepted a postdoctoral research position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Since the fall of 2007 she, John and the children have lived there. They were joined on 6 August, 2008 by my newest grandchild, John Holbrook. He would be John Holbrook III, but John and Alexia will leave it up to him, as he grows up, whether he wishes to include the numeral after his name. I am at once tickled and flattered that they have taken to calling him—yes, you might have guessed it—Jack!
Final Word
Pussycat Mew jumped over a coal,
And in her best petticoat burned a great hole;
Poor Pussy’s weeping, she’ll have no more milk
Until her best petticoat’s mended with silk.
Mother Goose
I have been counseled by my entire general staff, including my advisors, my adjutants and amanuenses—these, incidentally, are embodied in the person of Jeremy Cavaterra, who is something of a Renaissance man—to the general effect that since this is the autobiography of a writer I ought to say something about writing. Talking shop has never appealed much to me, and I have spent most of my career trying to avoid it. But Jeremy has convinced me that here it is not only suitable and fitting to break with habit, but essential. And so, I bow to the inevitable and will proceed.
My grandfather’s law office was situated on the ninth floor of the Balboa building on Market Street in San Francisco, and I visited him often. In the outer office was a typewriter, and when I was eight or nine years old I sat at this typewriter and set out to write cowboy stories. I made this attempt a few times but never got much farther than two or three pages. I don’t remember much about these stories, but I was here dipping my toe into what was to be my future career.
When I was about sixteen or seventeen, I was impelled to write some very silly stories describing the adventures of a group of teenagers at a seaside resort. These also have been consigned to the farthest precincts of oblivion.
I have already mentioned, in Chapter 4, that I wrote a science fiction story for my Creative English course at the university, and that the professor reviewed it in such sardonic terms that, had I been sensitive, my career would have gone glimmering. Fortunately I did not take his remarks to heart.
A few years later, some friends of mine started a science fiction society in Berkeley, which they called The Chowder and Marching Science Fiction Society of Berkeley. I wrote them a little story called “Seven Exits from Bocz”, which they published in their magazine.
Eventually I decided to become a professional writer: I started writing stories for sale. The first of these were gadget stories, dealing with some recondite aspect of science. I sold most of them, but I don’t look back on them with any pride. For a fact they were rather boring to write, and after the first few I abandoned this formula.
I then decided that my métier was novels, which I began to produce. The first of these I called Clarges, though it was published as To Live Forever, a title I detest.
The longer I wrote, the more I liked the results. I discovered that if I wrote to please and amuse myself, instead of editors and publishers, the books turned out better. Looking back, I am especially fond of my Cadwal sequence, and the latter two books of the Durdane set, Emphyrio, and more recently Night Lamp, Ports of Call and Lurulu. There are others I like as well: the so-called Demon Princes books, and of course the Cugel stories, Rhialto the Marvellous and the Lyonesse cycle.
Among the characters I’ve conceived, I also have my favorites: Navarth, the Mad Poet (Demon Princes); Baron Bodissey (Demon Princes), who wrote the encyclopedic tautology Life; also Henry Belt from “Sail 25”. Among the ladies I like Wayness (Cadwal), and Madouc (Lyonesse).
My work was accomplished partly when I was at home and partly while I was traveling. At home, I always wrote longhand using four or five different fountain pens, each filled with a different color of ink. As I wrote and paused to think about something, I would begin doodling, making pretty designs on the page; then I would become absorbed with these designs, which I colored with the various inks. Most of this artwork, I regret to say, I later discarded. I think back with nostalgia about my fountain pens and colored inks.
While traveling, of course, I used only one fountain pen and plain black or blue ink. We carried with us a portable typewriter, and Norma would type my first draft, which I would edit; then she would type a second draft, to which I would make a few further emendations; at last she would type a final draft to be sent forth to my agent.
My first agent was Scott Meredith, then Kirby McCauley, and finally Ralph Vicinanza, who is still my agent, and who, so I hope, will “turn down an empty glass where I made one”. Now that I think about it, there will be a lot of empty glasses turned down.
Long, long ago, when I was afflicted with wanderlust—in fact even as a boy of twelve or fourteen—I longed to drift down the Danube in a Faltboot from Donaueschingen to the Black Sea. I consulted maps, books, although nothing ever came of this project. There is a phrase th
at sticks in my memory, even while its provenance eludes me: “Far-off places with sweet-sounding names”. I had my own list of such names: Timbuktu, Kashmir, Bali, Tahiti, Vienna, Venice…Norma and I tried to touch in at these places over the years. The only one that we missed was Timbuktu; as outlined earlier we were close on that, at Bamako, but wisdom prevailed, and Norma and I returned home before our money ran out.
As should now be apparent, much of my work was produced while Norma, John and I inhabited some agreeable location here and there about the world. I planned this system when I was still very young, before I had written anything, and by some freak of circumstance it worked out. Of course, an equal or greater amount of my writing was done at home—I have no way of measuring this.
Early in my career I established a set of rather rigid rules as to how fiction should be written, but I find these rules difficult to formalize, or explain, or put into some sort of pattern which might instruct someone else. If I adhere to any fundamental axiom or principle in my writing, perhaps it is my belief that the function of fiction is essentially to amuse or entertain the reader. The mark of good writing, in my opinion, is that the reader is not aware that the story has been written; as he reads, the ideas and images flow into his mind as if he were living them. The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence.
In order to achieve this, the writer must put no obstacles in the reader’s way. Therefore I try avoid words that he must puzzle over, or that he cannot gloss from context; and when I make up names, I shun the use of diacritical marks that he must sound out, thus halting the flow; and in general, I try to keep the sentences metrically pleasing, so that they do not obtrude upon the reader’s mind. The sentences must swing. I also avoid the use of obscenity, although I notice in this present work here I’ve gotten a little close to the knuckle from time to time. But this is a special circumstance, and I think that I can hope for a certain degree of tolerance from my readers.
Who has been influential upon my development as a writer? Who indeed? I don’t know. To name some names, I admire C. L. Moore from the old Weird Tales magazine. As a boy I was quite affected by the prose of Clark Ashton Smith. I revere P. G. Wodehouse. I also admire the works of Jeffery Farnol, who wrote splendid adventure books but who is today unknown except to connoisseurs of swashbuckler fiction. There are perhaps others—Edgar Rice Burroughs and his wonderful Barsoomian atmosphere; Lord Dunsany and his delicate fairylands; Baum’s Oz books, which regrettably are of less and less interest to today’s children.
In Closing
Now I have touched all the bases, looked right and left, up and down, examined the eleven dimensions which certain theorists say are necessary for the understanding of existence. Therefore with nothing more to report I will wave my handkerchief and say:
AVE ATQUE VALE!
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Also By Jack Vance
The Dying Earth
1. The Dying Earth (1950) (aka Mazirian the Magician)
2. Cugel the Clever (1966) (aka The Eyes of the Overworld)
3. Cugel’s Saga (1966) (aka Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight)
4. Rhialto the Marvellous (1984)
Big Planet
1. Big Planet (1952)
2. The Magnificent Showboats (1975) (aka The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXII South, Big Planet) (aka Showboat World))
Demon Princes
1. The Star King (1964)
2. The Killing Machine (1964)
3. The Palace of Love (1967)
4. The Face (1979)
5. The Book of Dreams (1981 )
Planet of Adventure
1. The Chasch (19648 (City of the Chasch)
2. The Wannek (1969) (Servants of the Wankh)
3. The Dirdir (1969)
4. The Pnume (1970)
Durdane
1. The Anome (1973)
2. The Brave Free Men (1973)
3. The Asutra (1974)
Alastor Cluster
1. Trullion: Alastor 2262 (1973)
2. Marune: Alastor 933 (1975)
3. Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978)
Lyonesse
1. Suldrun’s Garden (1983) (aka Lyonesse)
2. The Green Pearl (1985)
3. Madouc (1990)
Cadwal Chronicles
1. Araminta Station (1988)
2. Ecce and Old Earth (1991)
3. Throy (1992)
Gaean Reach
1. The Domains of Koryphon (1974) (aka The Gray Prince)
2. Maske: Thaery (1976)
Other Novels
Vandals of the Void (1953)
The Rapparee (The Five Gold Bands/The Space Pirate) (1953)
Clarges (To Live Forever) (1956)
The Languages of Pao (1958)
Gold and Iron (Slaves of the Klau/Planet of the Damned) (1958)
Space Opera (1965)
The Blue World (1966)
Emphyrio (1969)
The Dogtown Tourist Agency (aka Galactic Effectuator) (1980)
Collections
The World-Thinker and Other Stories
The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (aka Gadget Stories)
Son of the Tree and Other Stories
Golden Girl and Other Stories
The Houses of Iszm and Other Stories
The Dragon Masters and Other
The Moon Moth and Other Stories
Autobiography
This is Me, Jack Vance (2009)
Acknowledgements
I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.
John Masefield, Sea Fever
As a coda to the above account, I wish to identify those persons who, in one way or another, have influenced the shape of my life and career. This list is very likely not all-inclusive, so I offer my apologies in advance to any whom I have inadvertently excluded.
My son John, Alexia Schulz, and my three grandchildren.
Jeremy Cavaterra, without whose help and urging this autobiography would have gone nowhere.
Ralph Vicinanza and Vince Gerardis, my agents and friends.
Tom Doherty, my valued and even indispensable publisher.
My nephew Stephen Vance and his wife Marja.
My brother David.
Bill Schulz, professor of mathematics, who is something of a linguist and surprises me occasionally with remarks in Basque, Celtic or even Ur-Indo-European—which of course I do not understand.
Kim Kokonnen, who provided the software which allowed me to write my last few books on the computer, thus facilitating my career.
Terry Dowling.
Andrei Simić.
David Alexander.
Paul Rhoads, who conceived the VIE.
Bob Lacovara, also instrumental in the production of the VIE.
Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller, who published many of my books.
Kevin Boudreau, who is currently assisting me in the production of my own jazz record.
Lastly, I cannot avoid mentioning people who are no longer living. I realize that this sort of thing could be carried a long way indeed; I could start acknowledging the debt of gratitude owed to Charlemagne, Alexander the Great or King Tut if I so chose, but I will not go to this extreme. I would like to mention again the name Poul Anderson, one of my dearest friends over many years, whom I admired, honored and regarded as a great gentleman.
I a
lso wish to remember our friends Gordon, Gwen and Tony, with whom we shared so many adventures.
And I shall end with the name that began this book: my wife Norma, who worked with me throughout our married life, sharing vicissitudes and pleasures both.