Book description
This volume includes Vance's first published story ("The
World-Thinker") and a selection of other stories including the
novella "Telek". Contents: The World-Thinker, Dream Castle
("I'll Build Your Dream Castle"), Seven Exits from Bocz, The
God and the Temple Robber ("The Temple of Han"), Telek, Men of
The Ten Books, D. P., Noise ("Music of the Spheres"), The
Absent Minded Professor ("First Star I See Tonight";
"Murder Observed"), The Devil On Salvation Bluff, Where
Hesperus Falls, The Phantom Milkman, A Practical Man's Guide, The House
Lords, The Secret All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the
author's preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition
(VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online
community of Vance's admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles,
and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate
overlaps. Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining engineering
and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World
War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice. He started
contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the mid 1940s and
published his first book, The Dying Earth, in 1950. Among his many books
are The Dragon Master, for which he won his first Hugo, Big Planet, The
Anome and the Lyoness sequence.
