Mearls talks about his inspiration for the 4e classes

[Hussar]

Well, apart from Appendix N, and being "mentioned" in the AD&D DMG Credits and Acknowledgements, Jack Vance is "mentioned" by name on p.40 of the rulebook as the inspiration of the magic system and on p.112 under ongoing campaigns. Eyes of the Overlord and Planet of Adventure are "mentioned." I suppose technically you can claim AD&D is not D&D.

Yup, buried amonst what 300 ish pages of Gygaxian prose is the name of Jack Vance. In a book that's been out of print for twenty years.

Sure, among D&D players, and a very, very small subset of those who've actually READ the 1e DMG, Vance might be known. But a common name that's recognized outside of that subset? Let's be realistic here.

Why is it so hard to believe that an author that has been out of print for longer than most players have been alive is obscure.

Next you're going to tell me that Leigh Brackett is a household name as well. Can you tell me what she wrote without looking it up?

 

[Erik Mona]

More than 10 of Jack Vances books are in print. If you count the omnibuses, more than that. And that's off the top of my head and not from an Amazon search or something. It's your point, so you can do the basic research yourself.

I wouldn't argue Leigh Brackett is a household name, but she wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back and co-wrote the screenplay to The Big Sleep with William Faulkner.

Whom, I trust, is a big enough in print writer for your tastes.

--Erik

 

[Hussar]

More than 10 of Jack Vances books are in print. If you count the omnibuses, more than that. And that's off the top of my head and not from an Amazon search or something. It's your point, so you can do the basic research yourself.

I wouldn't argue Leigh Brackett is a household name, but she wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back and co-wrote the screenplay to The Big Sleep with William Faulkner.

Whom, I trust, is a big enough in print writer for your tastes.

--Erik

Kudos to you Erik. Now, how many people do you think could name who Leigh Brackett was? I did actually know the answer.

Out of curiousity, when did those 10 Jack Vance books come back into print?

 

[Hussar]

Wow, holy crap. I had no idea that Vance was still producing in the 90's. Damn.

I gotta go to some better bookstores. But, to be fair, the print runs, doing some homework here, were extremely small. It's not a big surprise that they would not be widely found.

 

[amysrevenge]

Out of curiousity, when did those 10 Jack Vance books come back into print?

I started looking for Vance books in used book stores in about 2005, at the same time I started looking for Ted Sturgeon books. I found over 20 Sturgeon books and only 1 Vance book (Dragon Masters, which was very good). The two actually compare reasonably well, as they both use language in a similar way (where the construction of a sentence says almost as much as the words it contains) and did similar things for the early days of their genres.

I finally found Dying Earth as an omnibus in the UK this spring (a brand new omnibus in a new bookstore). Got about 2/3 of the way through it, didn't like it, and hastily moved back to SF without finishing it (Joe Haldeman FTW).

I greatly prefer Sturgeon to Vance, but I consider them both to be of about equal fame - in other words, completely and utterly unknown outside their respective genres (edgy golden age SF and old-school fantasy respectively).

 

[Erik Mona]

He would be less obscure if he was known or discussed outside the niche market of roleplaying gamers.

How does a multi-page profile in this Sunday's New York Times rank?

--Erik

 

[amysrevenge]

How does a multi-page profile in this Sunday's New York Times rank?

--Erik

I'm not a member of the NYT online so I can't reread it right now, but I did read the article earlier this week linked to another site. Isn't the title of that one "The Genre Artist"? And isn't it basically about how unknown/unappreciated he is? I remember a quote about how if he was from another country he'd have won a Nobel Prize for Literature (do they really give out one for this?), but since he was American nobody cared (very vague paraphrase of course, since I only barely remember the quote).

 

[Erik Mona]

Kudos to you Erik. Now, how many people do you think could name who Leigh Brackett was? I did actually know the answer.

Out of curiousity, when did those 10 Jack Vance books come back into print?

Mostly over the last 10 years or so. When I moved out to join the Wizards staff in 1999, almost all of his work had fallen out of print for one reason or another, a fact that many of his fans found maddening. The Demon Princes omnibus came out and stayed in print (it is _still_ in print, in fact) and the Dying Earth Omnibus followed, I believe both from Orb. A lot of other stuff followed, including a new Best Of from the Science Fiction Book Club that re-exposed some of his best short works to the modern audience.

A lot of us chipped in and picked up the Vance Integral Edition a while back, which came just in time for my mostly un-earned WotC Pokemon bonus. A lot of my friends who had worked there longer than me got cars and houses and stuff. My bonus was much smaller, so I got a complete set of Jack Vance's creative work, in hardcover.

I know a lot about Leigh Brackett, and the Planet Stories fiction imprint I manage at Paizo has brought five of her books back into print in the last two years.

--Erik

 

[FriarRosing]

I have looked, and have yet to ever see a book by Vance in my local bookstores. Even the used books stores, including the one that is essentially a pile of hundreds of obscure, ancient books (including tons of old Science Fiction, fantasy and various pulps), don't have it.

They don't carry any Lord Dunsany either, which has always been a pretty big letdown. I guess I'll just have to order them off Amazon or something.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Short of getting his own sitcom on the Disney Channel, what could he do to be less obscure?

Be as well known as Tolkien or Terry Pratchett or JK Rowling or RA Salvatore or L Frank Baum or Robert Jordan or etc, etc, etc. I'll give him this, he's less obscure than G. G. Pendarves. But that ain't a high bar.

Not only is Vance unknown outside the sci-fi/fantasy ghetto, I'd wager the vast majority of D&D players haven't heard of him.