nly every few years does the Science Fiction and Fantasy
Writers of America name a new Grand Master, among whose ranks
orbit such luminaries as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and
Robert Heinlein. But this April a new Grand Master will be
inducted: Jack Vance, in recognition of his long and vibrant
career as a science fiction and fantasy author. Vance fans, of
course, have always considered him to be one of the very greats,
as is shown by the care and attention that go into The Jack
Vance Archive.
The Archive is primarily a tool for collectors of
Vance's work. It contains complete bibliographies of his ouevre
in almost a dozen languages. There is also a monstrous
collection of images of book covers, also in many languages (the
English portion alone contains more than 100 images). The
bibliography is available as a searchable database with
cross-referenced results and cover images.
In addition to these catalogs, the Archive houses the
Web version of The Vance Phile, the premiere Jack
Vance fanzine, edited by Gregg Parmentier. Issues of the
Phile generally contain still more bibliographic
data, plus critical articles, reviews and interviews with people
involved with publishing Vance, such as his translators. Lastly,
there is a discussion board called the Market where collectors
can post notices of trades, sales and wish lists of Vance-related
items.
A dry first impression, but keep looking
This site's great strength is as a bibliographic resource.
The database is a marvel of ease of use. In any listing almost
all of the fields are cross referenced, so clicking on a
publisher's name will call up a list of all of Vance's books from
that publisher. Clicking on a year will call up a list of all
Vance books published that year. There are also forms for people
to input new data and make corrections. The site's international
coverage is admirable, providing information on all the Vance
novels and stories available in languages besides English.
But this site's great weakness is that it's hard to penetrate
beyond all those statistics. The database entries don't contain
any synopses of the novels, for example, nor are there any lists
of which books belong in which series (Vance loves series). But
The Vance Phile does contain more informative
articles. Here there is a guide to some of the
series, as well as reprinted introductions to Vance collections,
and even parodies of his writing. It's too bad there are so few
issues of the Phile -- it's got high quality content.
Newcomers to Vance should start here, then move on to the
database once they begin collecting. Anyone who enjoys Vance
invariably does.
