From his web site: “Author Jack Vance passed away at home on the evening of Sunday May 26, 2013, ending a long, rich and productive life. Recognized most widely as an author, family and friends also knew a generous, large-hearted, rugged, congenial, hard-working, optimistic and unpretentious individual whose curiosity, sense of wonder and sheer love of life were an inspiration in themselves. Author, friend, father and grandfather – there will never be another like Jack Vance.”

Born John Holbrook Vance on 28 August 1916, in San Francisco, California, he won the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and the SFWA Grand Master Award in 1997. He also won three Hugo Awards, one Nebula, and one World Fantasy Award.

Vance got an early start on a working life, doing stints as a bellhop, in a cannery, and on a gold dredge before he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied engineering, physics, journalism, and English. He was working as an electrician at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941, but left a month before the Japanese attack that precipitated the US entry into World War II. Weak eyesight prevented military service, so he worked as a rigger at the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, California, and enrolled in an Army Intelligence program to learn Japanese (he washed out). In 1943, he memorized an eye chart and became an able seaman in the Merchant Marine. In later years, boating remained his favorite recreation; boats and voyages are a frequent theme in his work. He worked as a seaman, a rigger, a surveyor, ceramicist, and carpenter before he established himself fully as a writer, which did not occur until the 1970s.

His first published story was “The World-Thinker,” which appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1945. Following that start, he quickly established himself as a force in short sf in the 1940s and 1950s, but he also turned to longer works. His landmark Dying Earth sequence, set in the far future, began with collection The Dying Earth (1950) and continued with novel The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Cugel’s Saga (1983), Rhialto the Marvelous (1984), and other shorter pieces. Many of his novels eventually became parts of series, including the Demon Princes sequence, the Planet of Adventure series, the Durdane trilogy, the Alastor Cluster sequence, the Lyonesse fantasy series, the Cadwal Chronicles, and the Ports of Call series. His autobiography, This Is Me, Jack Vance! (2009), won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book.

Vance’s other Hugos were for “The Last Castle” (novelette) in 1967 and “The Dragon Masters” (short story) in 1962. He was nominated for two others. “The Last Castle” also earned him a Nebula Award (he was nominated for another in 1984). His novel Lyonesse: Madouc won the World Fantasy Award in 1990, after two previous nominations, and three other nominations for the Lifetime Achievement Award.

His wife of 62 years, Norma Genevieve Ingold, died in 2008.