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4 unusual facts about Jack Vance


Dar Sai

Dar Sai is a fictional planet referenced in author Jack Vance's fourth "Demon Princes" novel, The Face.

Jack Vance

Vance's grandfather supposedly arrived in California from Michigan a decade before the Gold Rush and married a San Francisco girl.

Bad Ronald was adapted to a not particularly faithful TV movie 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 ever to be made into film.

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.


Acres of Books

In its long history Acres of Books has served clientele such as Jack Vance, Upton Sinclair, Stan Freberg, Gary Owens, James Hilton, Greg Bear, Tim Powers, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Paul Schrader, Fran Lebowitz, Robert Easton, Eli Wallach, Diane Keaton, and, most notably, Ray Bradbury, who immortalized the bookstore in an essay entitled "I Sing the Bookstore Eclectic".

Alastor Cluster

The Alastor Cluster is the fictional setting of three of Jack Vance's novels: Trullion: Alastor 2262, Marune: Alastor 933, and Wyst: Alastor 1716, each named after a world in the cluster.

Deryni Checkmate

In 1973, Deryni Checkmate ranked 15th in an annual poll of Locus magazine readers, placing it between Jack Vance's The Brave, Free Men and Barry N. Malzberg's Beyond Apollo.

Fantacollana

Authors translated included US most famous fantasy writers, such as Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, C. J. Cherryh, David Gemmell, Harry Turtledove and others.

Fictional currency

In the Demon Princes pentalogy by Jack Vance the currency 'SVU' or Standard Value Unit was described as being employed on most major settled worlds and having a value equivalent to one hour of common labor.

Kirth Gersen

Kirth Gersen is the protagonist of the five Demon Princes novels by Jack Vance, set approximately 1500 years in the future.

The Fall of Hyperion

The novel also contains explicit references to classical literature and modern writings, including the scientific works of the Jesuit and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the physicist Stephen Hawking, and some of the fiction of author Jack Vance.

Titus Crow

In an interview with Lumley, Robert M. Price suggests various possible models for Crow, including Miro Hetzel, Jack Vance's futuristic detective, Doctor Who, Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, August Derleth's Dr. Laban Shrewsbury, William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki and Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin.


see also