Misplaced Pages

#892107

117-654: John Holbrook Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013) was an American mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writer. Though most of his work has been published under the name Jack Vance, he also wrote several mystery novels under pen names, including Ellery Queen . Vance won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984, and he was a Guest of Honor at the 1992 World Science Fiction Convention in Orlando, Florida . The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made him its 15th Grand Master in 1997, and

234-466: A bellhop (a "miserable year"), in a cannery , and on a gold dredge . Vance described this era as a time of personal change: “Over a span of four or five years, I developed from an impractical little intellectual into a rather reckless young man, competent at many skills and crafts, and determined to try every phase of life.” He subsequently entered the University of California, Berkeley , and over

351-637: A houseboat which they sailed in the Sacramento Delta . Vance's interest in houseboats led him to depict them in “The Moon Moth” (1961), The Palace of Love (1967), and in chapter 2 of Wyst: Alastor 1716 (1978). In the early 1980s, Vance became increasingly interested in sailing, and he started building a 36-foot trimaran . Later, he owned Venture (a 17-foot cutter-rigged boat), Columbia (a 35-foot ketch-rigged boat), and finally Hinano (a 45-foot boat). While Vance derived pleasure from his sailing hobby, his increasingly poor eyesight and

468-524: A character in some issues of Crackajack Funnies beginning in 1940, a four issue series by Superior Comics in 1949, two issues of a short-lived series by Ziff Davis in 1952, and three comics published by Dell in 1962. In February 1990, Queen was used as a guest star by the comic book writer Mike W. Barr in the ninth issue of the magazine Maze Agency in the story titled The English Channeler Mystery: A Problem in Deduction . In July 1996, Queen,

585-475: A feature that also showed up in later books such as Double, Double and Ten Days' Wonder . Queen's "false solution, followed by the true" became a hallmark of the canon. Another stylistic element in many early books (notably The Dutch Shoe Mystery , The French Powder Mystery and Halfway House ) is Queen's method of creating a list of attributes (the murderer is male, the murderer smokes a pipe, etc.) and comparing each suspect to these attributes, thereby reducing

702-598: A few performances in Baltimore and Philadelphia. In 1949, novelist and playwright William Roos adapted the 1938 novel The Four of Hearts for stage, although it is not known if it was ever performed. In 2016, American playwright Joseph Goodrich adapted the 1942 novel Calamity Town for stage. The play premiered at the Vertigo Theatre in Calgary , Alberta on January 23, 2016. Ellery Queen appears as

819-643: A few were science fiction, but most were mysteries. Few were published at the time, but Vance continued to write mysteries into the early 1970s. In total, he wrote 15 novels outside of science fiction and fantasy, including the extended outline, The Telephone was Ringing in the Dark , published only by the VIE ( Vance Integral Edition ), and three books published under the Ellery Queen pseudonym. Some of these are not mysteries, such as Bird Isle , and many fit uneasily in

936-647: A figure who resembles Ridolph in his blending of detecting and troubleshooting (the "effectuating" indicated by the title). A number of the other science fiction novels include mystery, spy thriller, or crime-novel elements: The Houses of Iszm , Son of the Tree , the Alastor books Trullion and Marune , the Cadwal series, and large parts of the Demon Princes series. According to writer Michael Chabon , "Jack Vance

1053-630: A hand-carved wooden ceiling from Kashmir. The Vances traveled extensively, including on one around-the-world voyage, and often spent several months at a time living in places like Ireland, Tahiti , South Africa, Positano (in Italy) and on a houseboat on Lake Nagin in Kashmir . Vance began trying to become a professional writer in the late 1940s, as part of the San Francisco Renaissance , a movement of experimentation in literature and

1170-459: A kazoo, and was a competent harmonica player. His first published writings were jazz reviews for The Daily Californian (his college paper), and music is an element in many of his works. In 1946, Vance met and married Norma Genevieve Ingold (died March 25, 2008), another Cal student. Vance continued to live in Oakland , in a house he built and extended with his family over the years, including

1287-658: A loose adaptation of the 1965 novel The Fourth Side of the Triangle ) led to the 1975–1976 television series of the same name starring Jim Hutton in the title role with David Wayne as his widowed father Richard Queen. This series was developed by Richard Levinson and William Link , who later won a Special Edgars Award for creating it and Columbo . It was done as a period piece set in New York City in 1946–1947. Sergeant Velie, Inspector Queen's assistant, regularly appeared in it; he had previously appeared in

SECTION 10

#1732782459893

1404-662: A majority of them belong to a period long after humanity has colonized other stars, culminating in the development of a fictional region of interstellar space called the Gaean Reach . In its early phase, exhibited by the Oikumene of the Demon Princes series, this expanding, loose and pacific agglomerate has an aura of colonial adventure, commerce and exoticism. Later it becomes peace-loving and stolidly middle class. Vance's stories are seldom concerned directly with war and

1521-468: A near-faceless, near-characterless persona whose role is purely to solve the mystery. So striking are the differences between the different periods of the Ellery Queen character that Julian Symons advanced the theory that there were two Ellery Queens — an older and younger brother. Queen is said to be married and the father of a child in the introductions of the first few novels, but this plot line

1638-470: A planet with a passive, lazy and backwards culture is invaded and occupied, the planet's leader orders three new languages developed, to make his people more aggressive, industrious and inventive. In the short story " The Moon Moth ", natives must master a number of musical instruments in order to communicate with each other. Spoken words are modulated to acquire different meanings, or may be said to be given full meaning (respect, derision or sarcasm), by means of

1755-430: A reliable template: a geographic formula title ( The Dutch Shoe Mystery , The Egyptian Cross Mystery , etc.); an unusual crime; a complex series of clues and red herrings ; multiple misdirected solutions before the final correct solution is revealed, and a cast of supporting characters including Ellery Queen, the detective, Queen's father Inspector Richard Queen and his irascible assistant Sergeant Thomas Velie. What became

1872-601: A repair and coaling station for ships here in 1887. The surprise attack on the harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy on December 7, 1941, led the United States to declare war on the Empire of Japan , marking the United States' entry into World War II . Pearl Harbor was originally an extensive shallow embayment called Wai Momi (meaning 'Waters of Pearl') or Puʻuloa (meaning 'long hill') by

1989-642: A rural county sheriff ... and I bless John Holbrook Vance for the best job of satisfying these tastes with his wonderful tales of Sheriff Joe Bain ...". Vance has also written mysteries set in his science fiction universes. An early 1950s short story series features Magnus Ridolph, an interstellar adventurer and amateur detective who is elderly and not prone to knocking anyone down, and whose exploits appear to have been inspired, in part, by those of Jack London 's South Seas adventurer, Captain David Grief. The "Galactic Effectuator" novelettes feature Miro Hetzel,

2106-430: A sentence that is both grammatically acceptable and plausible in context: "It was hot, arid dusty." Similarly, there is no bibliography of where the stories have previously been published. Cover art may be found via Category:Jack Vance book cover images or at geofftaylor-artist.com and many other places. In 2012, Spatterlight Press started offering DRM -free e-books editions of many of the works of Jack Vance, based on

2223-404: A sharper view of Vance, Manfred Lee calling him, with typical vehemence, 'the biggest prig that ever came down the pike'." As Van Dine had done earlier with Philo Vance, Dannay and Lee gave Ellery Queen an extremely elaborate back story that was rarely mentioned after the first few novels. In fact, Queen goes through several transformations in his personality and his approach to investigation over

2340-601: A stay in Tahiti . The mystery novels reveal much about Vance's evolution as a science fiction and fantasy writer. He stopped working in the mystery genre in the early 1970s, except for science-fiction mysteries; see below. Bad Ronald is especially noteworthy for its portrayal of a trial-run for Howard Alan Treesong of The Book of Dreams . The Edgar-Award-winning The Man in the Cage is a thriller set in North Africa at around

2457-545: A time as part of a degaussing crew. The attack on Pearl Harbor took place about a month after he resigned his employment there. Vance graduated in 1942. Weak eyesight prevented military service. He found a job as a rigger at the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, California , and enrolled in an Army Intelligence program to learn Japanese, but washed out. In 1943, he memorized an eye chart and became an able seaman in

SECTION 20

#1732782459893

2574-410: A token force. During the reign of King Kalākaua the United States was granted exclusive rights to enter Pearl Harbor and to establish "a coaling and repair station". Although this treaty continued in force until August 1898, the U.S. did not fortify Pearl Harbor as a naval base. As it had for 60 years, the shallow entrance constituted a formidable barrier against the use of the deep protected waters of

2691-538: Is the American Detective Novel". Although Dannay outlived Lee by eleven years, the Ellery Queen nom de plume died with Lee. The last novel featuring the character Ellery Queen, A Fine and Private Place , was published in 1971, the year of Lee's death. However, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is still in print as of 2023, now published as six "double issues" per year by Dell Magazines . In 1932 and 1933, Dannay and Lee wrote four novels using

2808-429: Is a religious allegory about fascism . Ellery Queen, the fictional character, is the hero of more than thirty novels and several short story collections, written by Dannay and Lee and published under the Ellery Queen pseudonym. The creation of Queen was probably inspired by Philo Vance , the detective created by the writer S.S. Van Dine . According to the critic H.R.F. Keating, "Later the cousins [Dannay and Lee] took

2925-457: Is accurate. These are problems in deduction that do really permit of only one answer, and there are few crime stories indeed of which this can be said... Judged as exercises in rational deduction, these are certainly among the best detective stories ever written." In many earlier books like The Greek Coffin Mystery and The Siamese Twin Mystery , multiple solutions to the mystery are proposed,

3042-469: Is also more prominent in certain mysteries than in the science fiction ( The View from Chickweed's Window in particular). Bad Ronald was adapted to a TV film of the same name 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 to be made into film to date. Certain of the science fiction stories are also mysteries, penned using his full name John Holbrook Vance, three under

3159-669: Is entirely in keeping with the vision of Vance. Cugel is a complete rogue, who is nevertheless worthy of sympathy in always failing to achieve his goals. When asked about literary influences, Vance most often cited Jeffery Farnol , a writer of adventure books, whose style of "high" language he mentions (the Farnol title Guyfford of Weare being a typical instance); P. G. Wodehouse , an influence apparent in Vance's taste for overbearing aunts; and L. Frank Baum , whose fantasy elements were directly borrowed by Vance (see The Emerald City of Oz ). In

3276-573: Is never developed and he is portrayed as a bachelor in all of his later appearances. Nikki Porter, who acts as Queen's secretary and is something of a love interest, is first introduced in the radio series The Adventures of Ellery Queen in 1939. Her first appearance in a written story is on the final pages of the 1943 novel There Was an Old Woman , when a character with whom Queen has had some flirtatious moments suddenly announces that she will change her name to Nikki Porter and will work as Queen's secretary. Nikki Porter appears sporadically thereafter in

3393-447: Is not a mystery at all, but a Wodehousian idyll (also set near San Francisco), while The Flesh Mask or Strange People ... emphasize psychological drama. The theme of both The House on Lily Street and Bad Ronald is solipsistic megalomania, taken up again in the Demon Princes cycle of science fiction novels. Three books published under the house name Ellery Queen were written to editorial requirements and heavily revised by

3510-666: Is that the tide of events rushes on to annexation to the United States." From the conclusion of the Civil War , to the purchase of Alaska , to the increased importance of the Pacific states, the projected trade with countries in Asia and the desire for a duty-free market for Hawaiian staples, Hawaiian trade expanded. In 1865, the North Pacific Squadron was formed to embrace the western coast and Hawaii. Lackawanna in

3627-530: Is the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don’t get the credit they deserve. If ‘The Last Castle’ or ‘The Dragon Masters’ had the name Italo Calvino on it, or just a foreign name, it would be received as a profound meditation, but because he's Jack Vance and published in Amazing Whatever , there's this insurmountable barrier." Vance fans developed a website called Totality (pharesm.org), which enables users to do electronic searches of

Jack Vance - Misplaced Pages Continue

3744-454: Is without peer, his taste unequalled. As a bibliographer and a collector of the detective short story, Queen is, again, a historical personage. Indeed, Ellery Queen clearly is, after Poe , the most important American in mystery fiction." British crime novelist Margery Allingham said that Dannay and Lee had "done far more for the detective story than any other two men put together" and critic Anthony Berkeley Cox famously quoted "Ellery Queen

3861-480: The Edgar Award in 1961 for the best first mystery novel for The Man in the Cage . His first publications were stories in science fiction magazines . As he became well known, he published novellas and novels, many of which were translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, Italian and German. An Integral Edition of all Vance's works was published in 44 volumes and in 2010 a six-volume The Complete Jack Vance

3978-639: The Ethical Culture Fieldston School , in 1975 (his first two wives had both died; Dannay had three children from those marriages). He died on September 3, 1982, in White Plains, New York. Ellery Queen was created in the fall of 1928 when Dannay and Lee entered a mystery novel writing contest offering a prize of $ 7500 (equivalent to $ 133,000 in 2023) jointly sponsored by McClure's magazine and Frederick A. Stokes Company . They decided to use as their collective pseudonym

4095-536: The Hawaiians . Puʻuloa was regarded as the home of the shark goddess, Kaʻahupahau, and her brother (or son), Kahiʻuka, in Hawaiian legends. According to tradition, Keaunui , the head of the powerful Ewa chiefs, is credited with cutting a navigable channel near the present Puʻuloa saltworks, by which he made the estuary, known as "Pearl River", accessible to navigation. Making due allowance for legendary amplification,

4212-715: The Lyonesse Trilogy , in which medieval-style combat abounds. His characters usually become inadvertently enmeshed in low-intensity conflicts between alien cultures; this is the case in Emphyrio , the Tschai series, the Durdane series, and the comic stories in Galactic Effectuator , featuring Miro Hetzel. Personal, cultural, social, or political conflicts are the central concerns. This is most particularly

4329-515: The Merchant Marine . In later years, boating remained his favorite recreation; boats and voyages are a frequent motif in his work. He worked as a seaman, a rigger, a surveyor, a ceramicist, and a carpenter before he established himself fully as a writer, which did not occur until the 1970s. From his youth, Vance had been fascinated by Dixieland and traditional jazz . He was an amateur of the cornet and ukulele, often accompanying himself with

4446-629: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers. His most notable awards included Hugo Awards in 1963 for The Dragon Masters , in 1967 for The Last Castle , and in 2010 for his memoir This Is Me, Jack Vance! ; the Nebula Award in 1966, also for The Last Castle ; the Jupiter Award in 1975 and the World Fantasy Award in 1990 for Lyonesse: Madouc , and

4563-743: The Science Fiction Writers of America , described Vance as "one of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers of the 20th century". A memorial site set up by his family to post tributes received hundreds of messages in the days following his death. Vance made his debut in print with "The World-Thinker", a 16-page story published by Sam Merwin in Thrilling Wonder Stories , Summer 1945. His lifetime output totals more than 60 books—perhaps almost 90. His work has been published in three categories: science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. Among Vance's earliest published work

4680-539: The "dying Earth" setting (a far distant future in which the sun is slowly going out, and magic and technology coexist) to write the picaresque adventures of the ne'er-do-well scoundrel Cugel the Clever , and those of the magician Rhialto the Marvellous . These books were written in 1963, 1978 and 1981. His other major fantasy work, Lyonesse (a trilogy comprising Suldrun's Garden , The Green Pearl , and Madouc ),

4797-553: The 1938 novel The Four of Hearts , he spends some time working in Hollywood as a screenwriter. Soon, he has a slick façade, is part of Hollywood society and hobnobs comfortably with the wealthy and the famous. Beginning with Calamity Town in 1942, he becomes less of a cypher and more of a human being, often becoming emotionally affected by the people in his cases, and at one point quitting detective work altogether. Calamity Town and some other novels during this period are set in

Jack Vance - Misplaced Pages Continue

4914-422: The 1940s to multi-volume tales set in the space age. Scott Bradfield states that Vance "wrote about incomprehensibly far-off futures that weren’t driven by the splashy intergalactic military conflicts of his Golden Age predecessors, such as E.E. Doc Smith or Robert A. Heinlein. Instead, Vance’s futures are marked by rich, panoramic socioeconomic systems." While Vance's stories have a wide variety of temporal settings,

5031-789: The 1960s, Jack Vance's work has also been extensively translated into German. In the large German-language market, his books continue to be widely read. Vance was an original member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s and led by Lin Carter . Its purpose was to promote the sword and sorcery subgenre (such as Dying Earth stories by Vance), and some new works were published in Flashing Swords! anthologies edited by Carter, in both mass-market paperback and Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club editions. In 1976,

5148-429: The 1971 television film Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You ( a loose adaptation of the 1949 novel Cat of Many Tails ) . Harry Morgan played Inspector Richard Queen in this film, but he is described as Ellery Queen's uncle (perhaps to account for the fact that Morgan was only eight years Lawford's senior, or to account for Lawford's British accent). The 1975 television movie Ellery Queen (aka Too Many Suspects ,

5265-524: The 50th anniversary of Interpol and on a similar series issued by San Marino in 1979. 'Ellery Queen' received the following Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America: They were also runners-up for the Edgar in the following categories: Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu , Hawaii, west of Honolulu . It was often visited by

5382-450: The Ellery Queen name. In the early 1930s, before their identity as the authors behind Ellery Queen and Barnaby Ross had been made public, Dannay and Lee staged a series of public debates with Lee impersonating Queen and Dannay impersonating Ross, both of them wearing masks to preserve their anonymity. According to H.R.F. Keating, "People said Ross must be the wit and critic Alexander Woollcott and Queen [must be] S.S. Van Dine , creator of

5499-399: The Ellery Queen pseudonym. From 1961 onwards, they allowed the 'Ellery Queen' nom de plume to be used as a house name for several crime thrillers written by other authors. Dannay had initially opposed this project but was eventually persuaded by Lee, who was in financial difficulty at that time and wanted the extra royalties it would bring. The editing and supervision of these thrillers

5616-488: The Elusive Assassin by Ellery Queen in 1967, Ellery Queen: The Case of His Headless Highness in 1973, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Game in 1986 and a VCR -based game called Ellery Queen's Operation: Murder (loosely based on The Dutch Shoe Mystery ) in 1986. Queen, the character, was one of the twelve fictional detectives featured on a series of stamps issued by Nicaragua in 1973 to commemorate

5733-525: The Navy and the Air Force merged their two nearby bases; Pearl Harbor joined with Hickam Air Force Base to create Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam . In December 2016, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a joint visit to Pearl Harbor with US President Barack Obama . This trip marked the 75th anniversary of the attack and was the first official visit by a sitting Japanese leader. On December 4, 2019,

5850-592: The Reach conditions tend to be peaceable and commerce tends to dominate. At the edges of the Reach, out in the lawless Beyond, conditions are usually much less secure. Vance influenced many writers in the genre. Most notably, Michael Shea wrote a sequel to Eyes of the Overworld , featuring Cugel the Clever, before Vance did one himself (called Cugel's Saga ). Vance gave permission, and the book by Shea went into print before Vance's. Shea's book, A Quest for Simbilis ,

5967-611: The United States for Commerce and Seamen" was appointed to look after American business in the Port of Honolulu . These commercial ties to the American continent were accompanied by the work of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions . American missionaries and their families became an integral part of the Hawaiian political body. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, many American warships visited Honolulu. In most cases,

SECTION 50

#1732782459893

6084-637: The Vance Integral Edition texts. For most of his career, Vance's work suffered the vicissitudes common to most writers in his chosen field: ephemeral publication of stories in magazine form, short-lived softcover editions, in which stories sometimes were insensitively edited beyond his control. As he became more widely recognized, conditions improved, and his works became internationally renowned among aficionados. Much of his work has been translated into several languages, including Dutch, Esperanto, French, Spanish, Russian, and Italian. Beginning in

6201-406: The Vance Integral Edition. Volume six has a table of contents for the volumes; otherwise there is no exegesis . Issues of the project's magazine Cosmopolis describe the production process (of interest to anyone wishing accurate transcription of scanned text) and the detection of some surprising errors such as the scanning of "and" being recognised as "arid" ( Cosmopolis 17 , page 8) yet resulting in

6318-613: The air defense of Hawaii, for American commanders thought the Japanese would attack either Wake Island or the Philippines and had no understanding of the capabilities and proper employment of air power. As it was, had the Pacific Fleet acted on the war warnings, it undoubtedly would have sortied and been at sea on December 7, where the major ships would have been sunk in deep water, making salvage impossible. Shortly after

6435-650: The arts. His first lucrative sale was one of the early Magnus Ridolph stories to Twentieth Century Fox , who also hired him as a screenwriter for the Captain Video television series. The proceeds supported the Vances for a year's travel in Europe. There are various references to the Bay Area Bohemian life in his work. In the 1950s, Vance started a pottery and ceramics hobby, buying a kiln; this interest

6552-456: The best known part of the early Ellery Queen books was the "Challenge to the Reader", a single page near the end of the book, on which Queen, the detective, paused the narrative, directly addressed the reader, declared that they had now seen all the clues needed to solve the mystery, and only one solution was possible. According to Julian Symons, "The rare distinction of the books is that this claim

6669-642: The best-selling mystery writer in Japan till the end of the 1970s. Many short stories were also published under the Queen name, which were mostly well-received. The novelist and critic Julian Symons called them "as absolutely fair and totally puzzling as the most passionate devotee of orthodoxy could wish" and said they were "composed with wonderful skill" whereas the historian Jaques Barzun said they were "full of ingenious gimmicks and adorned with excellent titles". Dannay, without much involvement from Lee, founded

6786-399: The books. The Queen household, an apartment on West 87th street in New York City, is shared by Ellery Queen and his widowed father, Richard Queen. (Very late in the series, Richard Queen remarries, but how this affects his living arrangement is never spelled out.) The household also contains a houseboy named Djuna in the earlier novels. Possibly of Roma origin, Djuna appears periodically in

6903-568: The canon, apparently ageless and family-free, in a supporting role as cook, receiver of parcels, valet, and occasional comedy relief. He is the protagonist in most of the juvenile novels ghost-written under the pseudonym Ellery Queen Jr. The radio series The Adventures of Ellery Queen was broadcast on several networks from 1939 to 1948 with the lead role played by Hugh Marlowe (1939–1940), Carleton Young (1942–1943), Sydney Smith (1943–1947), Lawrence Dobkin (1947–48) and Howard Culver (1948). All episodes in this series were paused just before

7020-401: The case in the Cadwal series, though it is equally characteristic of the three Alastor books, Maske: Thaery , and, one way or another, in most of his science fiction novels. Another way in which Vance expands the usually narrow focus of most speculative fiction writers is the extensive details ranging from the culture of language to food, music, and rituals. In The Languages of Pao , after

7137-735: The category. These stories are set in and around his native San Francisco, except for one set in Italy and another in Africa. Two begin in San Francisco but take to the sea. Many themes important to his more famous science fiction novels appeared first in the mysteries. 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 . The revenge theme

SECTION 60

#1732782459893

7254-452: The celebrities featured in this series. In 2011, in an episode of the crime series Leverage , “ The 10 Li'l Grifters Job ”, Timothy Hutton 's character Nate Ford appears at a murder mystery party dressed as Ellery Queen, in a homage to the actor's late father, Jim Hutton. In 1936, Dannay and Lee, in collaboration with playwright Lowell Brentano, wrote the play Danger, Men Working . The production never made it to Broadway, closing after

7371-618: The character, was highlighted in the Gosho Aoyoma's Mystery Library section of volume 11 of the Detective Conan manga, a section of the series in which Aoyoma introduces a detective (or occasionally a villain) from mystery literature. A character also stated that he preferred Queen, the author, to Arthur Conan Doyle in volume 12 of the manga. Ellery Queen's name was attached to many games and puzzles including ( Ellery Queen's Great Mystery Game) Trapped in 1956, The Case of

7488-581: The commanding officers carried letters from the U.S. Government giving advice on governmental affairs and of the relations of the island nation with foreign powers. In 1841, the newspaper Polynesian , printed in Honolulu, advocated that the U.S. establish a naval base in Hawaii for the protection of American citizens engaged in the whaling industry. The British Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs Robert Crichton Wyllie , remarked in 1840 that, "... my opinion

7605-551: The conflicts are rarely direct. If there are battles, such as in the slave revolt against the nobility at the end of The Last Castle , they are depicted in an abbreviated length, as Vance is more interested in the social and political context than the clashing of swords. Sometimes at the edges of the Reach or in the lawless areas of Beyond, a planet is menaced or craftily exploited. Some more extensive battles are described in The Dragon Masters , The Miracle Workers , and

7722-473: The county with the same detailed and loving care with which, in the science fiction he writes as Jack Vance, he can create a believable alien planet." Dorothy B. Hughes , in The Los Angeles Times , wrote that it was "fat with character and scene". As for the second Bain novel, The New York Times said: "I like regionalism in American detective stories, and I enjoy reading about the problems of

7839-414: The course of the series. In the earlier novels, he is a snobbish Harvard -educated intellectual of independent means who wears pince-nez glasses and investigates crimes because he finds them stimulating. He supposedly derives these characteristics from his unnamed late mother, the daughter of an aristocratic New York family, who had married Richard Queen, a bluff and short policeman . Beginning in

7956-442: The crime fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine , which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961 onwards, Dannay and Lee commissioned other authors to write thrillers using the pseudonym Ellery Queen, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; some such novels were juvenile and were credited to Ellery Queen Jr. They also wrote four novels under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross , which featured

8073-575: The crime fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1941, and served as its editor-in-chief until his death in 1982. However, they together edited numerous collections and anthologies of crime fiction such as The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes and 101 Years' Entertainment, The Great Detective Stories, 1841–1941. They were awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America in 1961 for their work under

8190-554: The desire for the United States to have a permanent presence in the Pacific both contributed to the decision. Following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States Navy established a base on the island in 1899. On December 7, 1941, the base was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy airplanes and midget submarines, causing the American entry into World War II . There was no meaningful plan for

8307-455: The detective Drury Lane . Several movies, radio shows, and television shows have been based on their works. Dannay and Lee were cousins, who were better known by their professional names. Frederic Dannay was the professional name of Daniel Nathan and Manfred Bennington Lee that of Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky . Since 2013, the complete works of Ellery Queen have been represented by JABberwocky Literary Agency. Manfred Bennington Lee

8424-471: The devastating Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, two American military commanders, Lt. Gen. Walter Short and Adm. Husband Kimmel , were demoted of their full ranks. The two American commanders later sought to restore their reputations and full ranks. Over the years, Pearl Harbor remained a main base for the US Pacific Fleet after World War II along with Naval Base San Diego . In 2010,

8541-486: The end to allow a panel of celebrities a chance to solve the mystery. Some of the surviving scripts were published for the first time in the 2005 book The Adventure of the Murdered Moths. Between 1965 and 1967, Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries were broadcast as radio fillers . They began with the radio announcer Bill Owen saying "This is Ellery Queen..." and contained a short one-minute case. Some of

8658-488: The estuary already had an outlet for its waters where the present gap is; but Keaunui is typically given the credit for widening and deepening it. During the early nineteenth century, Pearl Harbor was not used for large ships due to its shallow entrance. The United States' interest in the Hawaiian Islands grew as a result of its whaling, shipping and trading activity in the Pacific. As early as 1820, an "Agent of

8775-401: The fantasy/sf small press Underwood-Miller released their first publication, the first hardcover edition of The Dying Earth in a high-quality limited edition of just over 1000 copies. Other titles in the "Dying Earth" cycle also received hardcover treatment from Underwood-Miller shortly thereafter, such as The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga . After these first publications and until

8892-427: The fictional New England town of Wrightsville even showed the limitations of Queen's methods of detection. Julian Symons said "Ellery... occasionally lost his father, as his exploits took place more frequently in the small town of Wrightsville... where his arrival as a house guest was likely to be the signal for the commission of one or more murders. Very intelligently, Dannay and Lee used this change in locale to loosen

9009-475: The fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake . Vance's maternal grandfather, L. M. (Ludwig Mathias) Hoefler, was a successful lawyer in San Francisco. Vance grew up in the family's large house in San Francisco on Filbert Street. When Vance's father left the family to live on his ranch in Mexico, the family's house in San Francisco was rented out to the father's sister. With the separation of his parents, and

9126-618: The following year was assigned to cruise among the islands, "a locality of great and increasing interest and importance". This vessel surveyed the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands toward Japan. As a result, the United States claimed Midway Island . The Secretary of the Navy was able to write in his annual report of 1868, that in November 1867, 42 American flags flew over whaleships and merchant vessels in Honolulu to only six of other nations. This increased activity caused

9243-508: The high costs of outfitting, berthing, and maintaining the vessel led him to sell the Hinano . Vance's failing eyesight also led him to cease his amateur jazz hobby. Although legally blind since the 1980s, Vance continued to write with the aid of BigEd software, written especially for him by Kim Kokkonen . His final novel was Lurulu . Although Vance had stated Lurulu would be his final book, he subsequently completed an autobiography, which

9360-414: The house pseudonym Ellery Queen , and one each using the pseudonyms Alan Wade, Peter Held, John van See, and Jay Kavanse. Some editions of his published works give his year of birth as 1920. In addition to the comic Magnus Ridolph stories, two major stories feature the effectuator Miro Hetzel, a futuristic detective, and Araminta Station is largely concerned with solving various murders. Vance returned to

9477-420: The imaginary town of Wrightsville, where subsidiary characters recur from story to story as Queen relates to the various strata of American society as an outsider. However, after his Hollywood and Wrightsville periods, he returns to his New York City roots for the rest of his career, and is then seen again as an ultra-logical crime solver who remains distant from his cases. In the very late novels, he often seems

9594-627: The inner harbor. The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom signed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 as supplemented by Convention on December 6, 1884. This treaty was ratified in 1887. On January 20, 1887, the United States Senate allowed the Navy the exclusive right to maintain a coaling and repair station at Pearl Harbor. (The US took possession on November 9 that year). The Spanish–American War of 1898 and

9711-422: The introduction to Dowling and Strahan's The Jack Vance Treasury , Vance mentions that his childhood reading including Edgar Rice Burroughs , Jules Verne , Robert W. Chambers , science fiction published by Edward Stratemeyer , the magazines Weird Tales and Amazing Stories , and Lord Dunsany . According to pulp editor Sam Merwin, Vance's earliest magazine submissions in the 1940s were heavily influenced by

9828-540: The islands and to the mainland aboard U.S. warships were arranged for members of the Hawaiian royal family and important island government officials. When King Lunalilo died in 1873, negotiations were underway for the cession of Pearl Harbor as a port for the duty-free export of sugar to the U.S. With the election of King Kalākaua in March 1874, a riot prompted landing of sailors from USS Tuscarora and Portsmouth . The British warship, HMS  Tenedos , also landed

9945-470: The list of suspects to a single name, often an unlikely one. By the late 1930s, when Ellery Queen, the fictional character, had moved to Hollywood to try movie scriptwriting, the tone of the novels changed along with the detective's character. Romance was introduced, solutions began to involve more psychological elements, and the "Challenge to the Reader" vanished. The novels also shifted from mere puzzles to more introspective themes. The three novels set in

10062-612: The loss of use of the San Francisco house, Vance's mother moved him and his siblings to their maternal grandfather's California ranch near Oakley in the delta of the Sacramento River . This setting formed Vance's love of the outdoors, and allowed him time to indulge his passion as an avid reader of his mother's large book collection, which included Edgar Rice Burroughs ’ Tarzan of the Apes and his Barsoom novels and Jules Verne 's The Mysterious Island . When Vance explored

10179-455: The mid-1990s, Tim Underwood and Charles Miller parted company. However, they have continued to publish Vance titles individually, including such works as Emphyrio and To Live Forever by Miller, and a reprint edition of The Eyes of the Overworld by Underwood. Because of the low print-run on many of these titles, often they could only be found in science fiction bookstores at the time of their release. An Integral Edition of all Vance's works

10296-487: The mid-1990s, Underwood-Miller published many of Vance's works, including his mystery fiction, often in limited editions featuring dustjacket artwork by leading fantasy artists. The entire Jack Vance output from Underwood-Miller comes close to a complete collection of Vance's previously published works, many of which had not seen hardcover publication. Also, many of these editions are described as "the author's preferred text", meaning that they have not been drastically edited. In

10413-463: The musical sounds. These details paint a far more detailed and complex picture of life and cultures in his books. The "Joe Bain" stories ( The Fox Valley Murders , The Pleasant Grove Murders , and an unfinished outline published by the VIE) are set in an imaginary northern California county; these are the nearest to the classical mystery form, with a rural policeman as protagonist. Bird Isle , by contrast,

10530-463: The mysteries are presented as intellectually challenging puzzles. These type of novels comprised what would later be known as the Golden age of detective fiction (Usually dated from 1920 to 1940 but some critics include the 1940s and even the 1950s). Mystery writer John Dickson Carr called this subgenre "the grandest game in the world". The first Ellery Queen book The Roman Hat Mystery established

10647-547: The naval fleet of the United States , before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 . Much of the harbor and surrounding lands are now a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the United States Pacific Fleet . The U.S. government first obtained exclusive use of the inlet and the right to maintain

10764-480: The nearby town, he started reading pulp fiction magazines at the local drugstore. With the death of his grandfather, who had supported the family, which coincided with the economic challenges of the Great Depression , the Vance family’s fortune dwindled, and Vance was forced to leave junior college and work to support himself, assisting his mother when able. Vance plied many trades for short stretches: as

10881-404: The next six years studied mining engineering, physics, journalism, and English. Vance wrote one of his first science fiction stories for an English class assignment: his professor commented in a scornful tone, "We also have a piece of science fiction"—Vance's first negative review. He worked as an electrician in the naval shipyards at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii, being paid "56¢ an hour," and worked for

10998-441: The novels and short stories, linking the character from radio and movies to the written canon. Paula Paris, an agoraphobic gossip columnist, is linked romantically with Queen in the 1938 novel The Four of Hearts and in some short stories in the 1940s but does not appear in the radio series or films and soon vanishes from the books. Queen is not given any serious romantic interests after Nikki Porter and Paula Paris disappear from

11115-520: The novels and the radio series, but had not been seen regularly in any of the previous television versions. Each episode contained a "Challenge to the Viewer" in which Queen broke the fourth wall to go over the facts of the case and encouraged the audience to try to solve the mystery before the correct solution was revealed. Eve Arden , George Burns , Joan Collins , Roddy McDowall , Milton Berle , Guy Lombardo , Rudy Vallée , and Don Ameche were among

11232-592: The period of the French-Algerian war. A Room to Die In is a classic 'locked-room' murder mystery featuring a strong-willed young woman as the amateur detective. Bird Isle , a mystery set at a hotel on an island off the California coast, reflects Vance's taste for farce. Vance's two rural Northern California mysteries featuring Sheriff Joe Bain were well received by the critics. The New York Times said of The Fox Valley Murders : "Mr. Vance has created

11349-634: The permanent assignment of at least one warship to Hawaiian waters. It also praised Midway Island as possessing a harbor surpassing Honolulu's. In the following year, Congress approved an appropriation of $ 50,000 on March 1, 1869, to deepen the approaches to this harbor. After 1868, when the Commander of the Pacific Fleet visited the islands to look after American interests, naval officers played an important role in internal affairs. They served as arbitrators in business disputes, negotiators of trade agreements and defenders of law and order. Periodic voyages among

11466-525: The pseudonym Barnaby Ross featuring Drury Lane , a Shakespearean actor who had retired from the stage due to deafness and is now often consulted as an amateur detective. The novels also feature Inspector Thumm (initially as a member of the New York police , later as a private investigator ) and his crime-solving daughter Patience. From the 1940s, republications of the Drury Lane books were mostly under

11583-504: The publisher. (Volume 45 of The Vance Integral Edition contains the original text for the three Ellery Queen novels. Vance previously refused to acknowledge them for their degree of rewriting.) Four others reflect Vance's world travels: Strange People, Queer Notions based on his stay in Positano, Italy; The Man in the Cage , based on a trip to Morocco; The Dark Ocean , set on a merchant marine vessel; and The Deadly Isles , based on

11700-408: The same name they had given to their detective as they believed readers tended to remember the names of detectives but forget those of their creators. They were informed that they had won the contest, but McClure's magazine went bankrupt and was absorbed by The Smart Set magazine before they received any money. The Smart Set magazine rejudged the contest and awarded the prize to an entry by

11817-484: The scripts of the television series The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950–1951 on Dumont , 1951-1952 on ABC ) were written by Helene Hanff , best known for her 1970 novel 84, Charing Cross Road . Shortly after the series began, Richard Hart , who played Queen, died and was replaced by Lee Bowman . In 1954, Norvin Productions produced the syndicated series Ellery Queen, Detective with Hugh Marlowe as

11934-484: The short story "The Uninhibited Robot" features a computer gone awry. Many of the early stories are comic. By the 1960s, Vance had developed a futuristic setting that he came to call the Gaean Reach , a fictional region of space settled by humans. Thereafter, all his science fiction was, more or less explicitly, set therein. The Gaean Reach per se is loose and expanding, old Earth (Gaia) being the center. Each planet has its own history, state of development and culture. Within

12051-524: The source texts collected by the Integral Edition project. It is the intent of Spatterlight Press to publish the complete Integral Edition in e-book form, and also as print-on-demand paperbacks. Gollancz use the VIE texts in their "SF Gateway" e-ditions starting in 2012. Ellery Queen Under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, they also edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime. Dannay founded, and for many years edited,

12168-574: The structure of their stories. More emphasis was placed on personal relationships and less on the details of investigation." In the 1950s and the 1960s, Dannay and Lee became more experimental, especially in the novels they wrote with other writers. The Player on the Other Side (1963), ghost-written with Theodore Sturgeon , delves more deeply into motive than most Queen novels. And on the Eighth Day (1964), ghost-written with Avram Davidson ,

12285-451: The stuff out word by word? Did one write the dialogue and the other the narration? ... What eventually happened was that Fred Dannay, in principle, produced the plots, the clues, and what would have to be deduced from them as well as the outlines of the characters and Manfred Lee clothed it all in words. But it is unlikely to have been as clear cut as that." According to the crime fiction critic Otto Penzler , "As an anthologist, Ellery Queen

12402-486: The style of James Branch Cabell . Fantasy historian Lin Carter notes several probable lasting influences of Cabell on Vance's work, and suggests that the early "pseudo-Cabell" experiments bore fruit in The Dying Earth (1950). Science fiction critic Don Herron cites Clark Ashton Smith as an influence on Vance's style and characters' names. Vance's science fiction runs the gamut from stories written for pulps in

12519-463: The super-snob detective Philo Vance , on whom 'Ellery Queen' was indeed modeled." In the 1960s, Dannay and Lee allowed the Barnaby Ross name to be used as a pseudonym for a series of historical romance novels by the writer Don Tracy. The Queen novels are examples of "fair play" mysteries, a subgenre of the whodunit mystery in which the reader obtains the clues along with the detective and

12636-559: The title character. Episodes from this series were broadcast on many local American networks and in United Kingdom between 1954 and 1959 under various titles like Mystery Is My Business , Crime Detective and New Adventures of Ellery Queen. George Nader played Queen in NBC 's The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen (1958–1959), but was replaced by Lee Philips in the final episodes. Peter Lawford starred as Ellery Queen in

12753-498: The writer Isabel Briggs Myers but in 1929, Frederick A. Stokes Company agreed to publish Dannay and Lee's story under the title The Roman Hat Mystery . Buoyed by its success, they were contracted to write more mysteries and they went on to write a successful series of novels and short stories that lasted 42 years. During the 1940s, Ellery Queen was probably the most popular American mystery writer. More than 150 million copies of Queen's books were sold globally and 'he' remained

12870-408: Was a set of fantasy stories written while he served in the merchant marine during the war. They appeared in 1950, several years after Vance had started publishing science fiction in the pulp magazines, under the title The Dying Earth . Vance wrote many science fiction short stories in the late 1940s and through the 1950s, which were published in magazines. Of his novels written during this period,

12987-428: Was an influence on his story "The Potters of Firsk” (1950). Science fiction authors Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson were among Vance's closest friends. In the early 1950s, when Frank Herbert was a reporter, he interviewed Vance, and the men became friends. They moved to Mexico with their families to establish a "writer's colony" at Lake Chapala , near Guadalajara . In 1962, Vance, Herbert, and Anderson jointly built

13104-825: Was born as Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky on January 11, 1905, in Brooklyn, New York . He graduated from the New York University with a summa cum laude degree in English in the 1920s. He died on April 3, 1971, in Roxbury, Connecticut, survived by his second wife Kaye Brinker and seven children from the two marriages. Frederic Dannay was born as Daniel Nathan on October 20, 1905, in Brooklyn, New York. He married his third wife Rose Koppel, an assistant registrar at

13221-432: Was completed in 1989 and set on a mythological archipelago off the coast of France in the early Middle Ages . Vance's stories written for pulps in the 1940s and 1950s covered many science fiction themes , with a tendency to emphasize mysterious and biological themes (ESP, genetics, brain parasites, body switching, other dimensions, cultures) rather than technical ones. Robots, for example, are almost entirely absent, though

13338-760: Was done almost entirely by Lee; Dannay refused to even read these books. None of the ghostwritten novels feature Ellery Queen as a character. Three of them star "the governor's troubleshooter" Micah "Mike" McCall and six of them feature Captain Tim Corrigan of the New York City Police Department . The prominent science-fiction writer Jack Vance wrote three such novels including the 1965 locked room mystery A Room to Die In . Dannay and Lee remained reticent about their writing methods. Novelist and critic H.R.F. Keating wrote, "How actually did they do it? Did they sit together and hammer

13455-548: Was published in July 2009. Vance died on the morning of May 26, 2013, at the age of 96 in his home in the Oakland Hills. Vance's son John Holbrook Vance II described the cause as the complications of old age , saying "everything just finally caught up with him". Tributes to Vance were given by various authors, including George R. R. Martin , Michael Moorcock , Neil Gaiman , and Elizabeth Bear . Steven Gould , president of

13572-459: Was published in a limited edition of 44 hardback volumes. A special 45th volume contains the three novels Vance wrote as Ellery Queen . This edition was created from 1999 to 2006 by 300 volunteers working via the internet, under the aegis of the author. The texts and titles used are those preferred by the author. In 2010, Afton House Books presented The Complete Jack Vance ISBN   978-0-9825953-0-5 in six large volumes using texts prepared by

13689-561: Was released. A 2009 profile in The New York Times Magazine described Vance as "one of American literature's most distinctive and undervalued voices". He died at his home in Oakland, California on May 26, 2013, aged 96. Vance's great-grandfather is believed to have arrived in California from Michigan a decade before the Gold Rush and married a San Francisco woman. Early family records were apparently destroyed in

#892107