by Jack Vance
My grandfather died, and an era came to an end. My mother and father were divorced, with my father still resident in Mexico, near Tepic. The family was now broke, and I could not go on to college. These were tough times: the heart of the Depression. For me, it was a time of metamorphosis. 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. During this time I roamed here and there, working at all manner of jobs: fruit-picking, farm work, three seasons at the California Cannery in Antioch, two seasons in tomatoes, one in asparagus. I became connected with Western-Knapp Engineering, which built mining equipment, mills, tanks, ore-processing plants, heavy construction, all up and down the Sierras: out of Bishop, Copperopolis, French Gulch and Camptonville. I worked on a drill rig searching for ore along Sailor Flat; on a dredge scratching the bed of the Trinity River for gold.
Returning to San Francisco, I worked for a miserable year at the Olympic Club as bell-hop and elevator operator. This was a terrible period, the nadir of my life; when I think back I wince. Ultimately I was fired, and I was glad.
Immediately I registered at the University of California at Berkeley, as a physics major. My grades were good but in the middle of my junior year I became restless and took a leave of absence. I found employment as an electrician’s helper in Honolulu, at the navy yard. They put me to work at pulling degaussing cable around ships’ hulls. The work was very hot and pay was bad: 56 cents an hour. I could not live on it, much less save anything, and after three months, I returned to the mainland, arriving home a month before war broke out.
I went to work at the Kaiser Shipyards as a rigger, and also started the Army Intelligence program, learning Japanese. At the shipyards I practiced calligraphy, writing Japanese characters on the iron plates of the hulls. No one ever seemed curious as to this exercise, nor questioned my intentions.
After two years it was evident that I would never learn colloquial Japanese and I was dropped from the program. I quit at the shipyards, joined the Merchant Marines and went to sea as an able seaman. My eyes were not good even then; the only way I could join was to memorize the eye chart, which I did. Bad eyes and all, I went about my duties.
I had done some desultory writing previously but while at sea I got seriously to work and produced the stories which later became known as The Dying Earth. After a couple of years I left the Merchant Marines and returned to Berkeley. Here I met and married Norma. I had sold two mediocre short stories, but now the business of writing became a necessity if I were to maintain any semblance of the lifestyle to which I had become accustomed. While Norma studied at the University I was attempting to produce E.E. Smith epics without much luck.
Norma and I took some lessons in ceramics and became very enthusiastic about making dinnerware, masks and other objects. We decided to open a shop to sell materials, tools, and do firing. Of course we were undercapitalized and it was hard work but we had a great time for a year or so, then had to give it up. Meanwhile, I tried first-draft writing, and sold the first two ‘Magnus Ridolph’ stories written on this basis. Twentieth Century Fox bought one of these wretched stories and also hired me as a scriptwriter. Before long my producer was promoted to Chief Producer and I was released. No matter; Norma and I set out for Europe where we stayed over a year. I remember finishing Vandals of the Void for Winston at Positano. When we returned to New York we rented an apartment from which I wrote a number of Captain Video scripts. Back in California, I tried to continue with Captain Video from an old house in the mountains near Napa, but the arrangement failed to work out.
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat sent Frank Herbert to interview me. The resulting article was headlined ‘Jack Vance, Flying Saucer Expert’. In spite of this we became great friends and had many good times together. The Herberts and the Vances, seeking adventure and romance in an inexpensive location conducive to writing, planned an expedition. We took off in a Jeep Station Wagon, customized with cubbies and net slings for all manner of items and drove to Mexico. (Frank had assembled a first aid kit to do any backwoods dispensary proud.) At Lake Chapala we leased a large apartment and set up housekeeping. A red flag flying on the veranda warned. ‘Writers at Work’ and all respected this, the Herbert children included. It was there I started to write the novel Clarges, which Betty Ballantine renamed To Live Forever—a rotten title—the first of the type of stories I write today.
Late in the ’60s, Poul Anderson and Frank Herbert began to talk about building a houseboat for use in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta waterways. Ever since my childhood, living near to Little Dutch Slough, this had been a dream of mine. And I suppose I pushed the most fervently, though Poul and Frank were no slouches. I put forth a plan and our partnership was established. The section of two pontoons were built in the Vance driveway, then transported to a beach near the Standard Oil refinery in Richmond. The sections were assembled and filled with white Styrofoam blocks, for flotation. The pontoons were covered over with plywood, and sealed with fibreglass. A platform was attached to the finished pontoons, which in turn were set on poles to be rolled down to the water’s edge at low tide. At this point, the owners of the marina, where we would finish the houseboat, furnished a bottle of champagne for its christening; that done, we found more bottles, relaxed, listened to New Orleans jazz and waited for high tide.
We worked most weekends building a house on the platform, anxious for the day the houseboat would be moved to the delta. One night, during a bad storm, it sank to the bottom. What to do? After serious discussion we decided that two of us should put on diving gear, dive to the bottom carrying plastic sacks filled with Styrofoam blocks and air, wedge them under the platform and tie them to the outer edges of the hulls. Poul and I spent a strenuous couple of days, but the boat was finally raised to the surface. Cleaning out the muck took a bit longer.
About a year later, glistening with white and turquoise paint, all fitted out with bunks, steering mechanism, pot-bellied wood stove, even a head, the houseboat was ready for its voyage to the delta. A delay occurred when we grounded on a sand bar and were forced to wait for the tide to change; then another stop at a marina beneath the Carquinez Bridge to await daylight became necessary. Aside from this, all went smoothly on the way upriver; and once tied to a cleat on the dock of Moore’s Riverboat Yacht Haven, located on the Mokelumne River, the good times were many.
Partners departed and others joined. Frank could not continue due to medical problems and a subsequent move to Seattle. One sad day even Norma and I had to find someone to take our place, due to plans for more extended travels. Our good friend Albert Hall and his two children were happy to oblige, especially since they already had become part of the group. Eventually, even Poul had no time for the upkeep and enjoyment of the houseboat. Another good friend Ali Szantho entered the partnership. All the writers had departed; new owners were enjoying it, and that’s where my part of its history ends.
Since then a great deal has happened. Norma and I have traveled extensively; our son John accompanied us from the age of three-and-a-half. His fourth birthday was spent at Bondi Beach near Sydney, Australia. I recall with a great deal of nostalgia our travels together; for Norma and I, perhaps our happiest times. It was a perfect combination of work and pleasure. We would search for a pleasant locale in the country, the mountains; near a lake, a river or an ocean and rent a house, or an apartment, and go to work. I would write the first draft in longhand; Norma typed the second draft, and any others necessary, on a small portable Hermes. (Actually, we wore out two portables, the first was an Olivetti.) Prior to twenty years ago most of my stories and novels were written wholly, or partially, in foreign places.
Today Norma and I live in the Oakland hills, in a house which has been undergoing changes constantly for the past forty-three years. Our son, John, has been helping me more than half his life, and with the onset of my blindness has totally taken over all the remo
deling. I see my brother David frequently; he is also an engineer and scientist of good reputation, though now retired. David’s son Stephen, with his wife Marja, circumnavigated the world in a Cal 2-27 sloop. At this time Stephen and his wife are working as masters of a 93' sailing yacht, but are thinking of retiring; they want to build a large catamaran, which I do not consider feasible, since when a catamaran is flipped, that is how it remains. Still, so they claim, it floats until help arrives; while a monohull, once it sinks, goes directly to the bottom and remains there.
My son John and I invested in the beautiful Hinano, a forty-five foot ketch, with the intent of sailing the South Seas and perhaps beyond, but for various reasons, one being that John was twenty-two and had not yet entered college, never quite succeeded in bringing it off. John is unregenerate; he has his degree and still wants to own a cruising boat. Perhaps he will do so one day.
I fear not, though the spirit is willing. My vision presently is holding its own but there’s not much left, cramping all kinds of enterprises. After my next book, I am uncertain what will happen. We shall see.
—Jack Vance 2000
Editor Bios
Terry Dowling
Terry Dowling (www.terrydowling.com) is one of Australia’s most acclaimed and best-known writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror, the award-winning author of Rynosseros, Blue Tyson, Twilight Beach, Wormwood, The Man Who Lost Red, An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, Blackwater Days, Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear and editor of Mortal Fire: Best Australian SF and The Essential Ellison. He has also written a number of articles on Jack’s writing, among them “Kirth Gersen: The Other Demon Prince” (which won him the 1983 William Atheling Award for Criticism) and his 28,000 word “The Art of Xenography: Jack Vance’s ‘General Culture’ Novels” (Science Fiction # 3, December 1978). Terry is a close friend of the Vances and a frequent visitor to their home in the Oakland hills. Jack wrote an Introduction to Blue Tyson, Terry’s 1992 collection of Tom Rynosseros stories, and refers to a Terence Dowling’s World in Throy. In Ports of Call, he mentions a drink called a “Wild Dingo Howler, which was invented by a reckless smuggler named Terence Dowling.” Terry counts these things among his most treasured possessions.
Jonathan Strahan
Jonathan Strahan (www.jonathanstrahan.com.au) is an editor, anthologist and reviewer from Perth, Western Australia. He established one of Australia's leading semiprozines before moving to work for Locus as an editor and book reviewer. He has been Reviews Editor for Locus since 2002, and he has had reviews published in Locus, Eidolon, Ticonderoga and Foundation. He has won the William J Atheling Jr Award for Criticism and Review, the Ditmar Award a number of times, and is a recipient of The Peter McNamara Award. As a freelance editor, he has edited or co-edited 11 anthologies, with five more in the pipeline. He is editor of the The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Science Fiction: Best of, Fantasy: Best of, and Best Short Novels anthology series. He also edited The Locus Awards. He recently completed Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005 and Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005 and Best Short Novels: 2006, and is working on a YA SF anthology for Viking Penguin and an anthology of new space opera stories to be co-edited with Gardner Dozois for HarperCollins.
