Jack Vance Books in Order

Adventurer Paddy Blackthorn escapes a death sentence carrying five bracelets that hold clues to a secret space drive. With agent Fay Bursill, he travels between hostile worlds to break the monopoly keeping Earth beneath alien powers.

Searching for his romantic rival, Joe Smith reaches Kyril, where a vast sacred tree supports a powerful theocracy. Mistaken for a spy, he becomes entangled in political schemes that threaten to derail his increasingly dangerous pursuit.

Claude Glystra leads an Earth commission investigating a would-be planetary tyrant, but sabotage brings his ship down far from safety. He must cross forty thousand miles of strange societies and dangerous terrain to reach Earth Enclave.

Teenager Dick Murdock leaves Venus to visit his astronomer father on the Moon as space pirates attack passenger liners. Mysterious signals and suspicious activity draw him into the search for their elusive leader, the Basilisk.

The inhabitants of Iszm grow elaborate living houses and guard the seeds that would allow other worlds to copy them. A plot to steal a female seed promises immense wealth but faces formidable protection and suspicion.

Gavin Waylock once earned immortality in Clarges but lost his status after a murder accusation. Emerging from seven years in hiding, he competes to regain eternal life while a determined woman works to ensure his failure.

The people of Pao live peacefully but depend on other worlds and submit to invaders. Introducing three new languages promises to transform their society into scientists, workers, and soldiers, raising questions about who controls that transformation.

Earthman Roy Barch and an alien woman are abducted by the Klau and forced into labor on a brutal industrial planet. Refusing to accept captivity, Roy plans to steal a vessel and turn it into a spaceship.

Darrell Hutson travels to Morocco after his adventurer brother Noel disappears during a weapons-smuggling venture. Following a trail involving heroin and dangerous contacts, Darrell must navigate unfamiliar surroundings to discover what happened to his missing sibling.

On a remote world, rival human communities breed intelligent reptilian creatures as weapons of war. The arrival of aliens who have similarly reshaped humans forces the dragon masters to face a threat beyond their local disputes.

Four science fiction stories follow space trainees, bureaucratic rebels, ambitious hosts and explorers confronting unfamiliar intelligence. First collected as Future Tense, these tales test human ingenuity against strange environments, tangled institutions and the limits of communication.

Kirth Gersen pursues Kokor Hekkus, one of the criminals who destroyed his childhood home. Working undercover in the lawless Beyond brings him into a scheme involving immortality, counterfeit money, and an enemy whose identity is elusive.

Raised to avenge the destruction of his home, Kirth Gersen hunts five notorious Demon Princes. A murder on Smade's Planet offers a lead to Attel Malagate, drawing him into a dangerous investigation of his first target.

Teenager Jean Parlier enters the strange society of Abercrombie Station, where weightlessness and wealth have produced unusual inhabitants. Her adventures continue with a search for her missing parents that leads to a carefully prepared trap on Codiron.

A wealthy patron funds an Earth opera company's interstellar tour, presenting familiar music to bewildered audiences on distant planets. Secret agendas disrupt the enterprise while her nephew discovers unexpected complications in the woman he intends to marry.

Sklar Hast lives on a water-covered planet whose people feed a giant sea predator in exchange for protection. Questioning this arrangement pits him against an entrenched priesthood and a creature whose demands are growing increasingly dangerous.

Aliens abduct physicist Paul Burke and reveal that invisible parasites influence human minds. Ordered to remove them or face Earth's destruction, he returns with a painful treatment and must find a way to avert disaster.

Earth's aristocrats live in castles maintained by enslaved aliens, knowing little about the systems sustaining their comfort. When the servants revolt and destroy all but one stronghold, the remaining humans must confront their dependence and ignorance.

These stories follow mathematician and problem-solver Magnus Ridolph across strange worlds, where murder, commercial schemes, and alien behavior demand ingenious solutions. His clients often doubt his methods as he turns unfamiliar conditions into clues and bargaining opportunities.

Kirth Gersen poses as a journalist to gain access to the elusive Demon Prince Viole Falushe. An invitation to the Palace of Love brings him closer to his target while exposing a civilization shaped by obsession.

After his starship is destroyed, scout Adam Reith is stranded on Tschai, a world divided among hostile alien peoples and human communities. Seeking a way home draws him into the conflicts surrounding the powerful Chasch.

On Halma, craftsmen labor under feudal rulers who forbid machinery and keep profits low. After his father's unjust death, Ghyl Tarvoke searches for the truth behind the legend of Emphyrio, hoping to understand his world's inequalities.

Stranded scout Adam Reith travels with his companions across Tschai in search of a spaceship. Their efforts to escape bring them into contact with the Wankh and the human intermediaries who control the aliens' dealings with outsiders.

Unable to acquire a spaceship, Adam Reith plans to build one, but needs substantial funds. Seeking valuable sequins in the Dirdir's hunting preserve exposes him to deadly predators and the manipulations of the formidable Aila Woudiver.

The underground Pnume hear of Adam Reith's claim to come from Earth and decide he belongs in their museum of Tschai's history. To escape permanent display, Reith must survive their caverns and find his way home.

Minstrel Gastel Etzwane lives under an anonymous ruler who controls citizens through explosive collars. When he challenges the system, exposing the Anome's identity becomes a dangerous effort to free his homeland from generations of arbitrary power.

After Ronald Wilby kills a neighborhood girl, his mother conceals him inside their house's walls. When she dies and another family moves in, his increasingly delusional fantasies turn the unsuspecting daughters into targets of his obsession.

Gastel Etzwane discovers that the invasion of Durdane was only part of an enemy's wider campaign against humanity. Facing enslavement and an overwhelming force, he must find a way to resist the aliens directing the conflict.

Gastel Etzwane must defend Shant against invading Roguskhoi armed by an unknown enemy. Generations of enforced peace have left his people unprepared for war, forcing him to revive lost military skills and organize a free army.

Former soldier Glinnes Hulden returns to Trullion to find his family's island sold and its proceeds spent. His effort to regain the property draws him into local rivalries, the game of hussade, and dangerous off-world interests.

On Koryphon, competing peoples dispute the ownership of land claimed by both settled land barons and those asserting ancestral rights. Their conflict exposes tensions between sophisticated city society, rural power, and the dangerous consequences of domination.

An amnesiac wanderer discovers he is Efraim, ruler of a mountainous realm on Marune, a planet lit by four suns. Returning home restores his title but leaves him searching for the enemy who erased his memory.

Showboat captain Apollon Zamp accepts an invitation to compete for a king's prize upriver. Rival performers and an enigmatic passenger complicate his journey through strange communities, where local customs can turn theatrical ambition into physical danger.

Investigator Miro Hetzel is hired to discover how the mysterious Istagam Corporation sells technical goods so cheaply. His search takes him to planet Maz, where alien warfare, unfamiliar customs, and murder complicate the commercial mystery.

Young Jubal Droad seeks his fortune on Maske and becomes an economic spy for a powerful household. Romance and rivalry draw him into an investigation of a sinister interplanetary cartel with designs on his homeworld.

Investigator Miro Hetzel searches for a brilliant surgeon who stole body parts from his client. Retracing Faurence Dacre's past leads toward a remote community, where an unusual family arrangement may conceal the fugitive's whereabouts and intentions.

Artist Jantiff Ravenstroke visits Wyst to experience its distinctive light and egalitarian culture. Instead, he encounters a society where enforced equality masks desperation, and the craving for real food drives people toward increasingly dangerous schemes.

Kirth Gersen follows Demon Prince Lens Larque across several worlds, pursuing clues tied to an apparently worthless company. His search moves between a harsh desert society and its wealthy trading partner, revealing an elaborate personal scheme.

Galactic investigator Miro Hetzel tackles two cases: a manufacturer's suspiciously cheap products and a surgeon who stole his client's body parts. Alien customs, commercial secrecy, and personal history complicate investigations that require ingenuity rather than brute force.

Miro Hetzel works as a private investigator across the Gaean Reach, following mysteries involving an inexplicably successful manufacturer and a fugitive surgeon. His cases lead into unfamiliar societies where careful observation is essential to understanding the danger.

Kirth Gersen hunts Howard Alan Treesong, the last Demon Prince, whose ambitions extend into powerful interstellar institutions. A notebook of childhood fantasies offers a way into his enemy's past and a possible means of drawing him out.

Princess Suldrun defies King Casmir's plans to use her marriage to secure power in the Elder Isles. Confined to her garden, she encounters love while political ambitions and magical intrigues spread across the surrounding kingdoms.

This reference work gathers the invented vocabulary of Jack Vance's fiction, compiled by Dan Temianka. Its entries provide a companion to Vance's distinctive worlds, helping readers navigate their unusual terminology and imaginative linguistic detail.

This selection combines Jack Vance stories with an unpublished Cat Island fragment, an interview, and a guide to people, places, and customs in his fictional worlds. It brings his shorter fiction together with material illuminating the worlds he created.

Magnus Ridolph travels the galaxy as a troubleshooter for hire, confronting clients who frequently try to cheat or exploit him. These stories follow his deceptively mild manner and inventive reasoning through unusual problems and dangerous encounters.

This collection brings together ten adventures of interstellar troubleshooter Magnus Ridolph. Behind his unassuming appearance lies a formidable investigator whose work among alien societies and unscrupulous clients repeatedly demands unconventional solutions to difficult problems.

King Aillas struggles to defend the Elder Isles against the Ska and King Casmir's schemes. A malevolent green pearl and a princess's abduction add magical threats to the political conflicts surrounding his unsettled realm.

Young Glawen Clattuc grows up within Cadwal's restrictive conservation society, uncertain of his future. The mysterious disappearance of Sessily Veder draws him into an investigation that begins exposing a conspiracy against the protected planet.

Madouc discovers that her place in Lyonesse's royal family conceals a fairy origin and sets out to learn her parentage. Her search unfolds amid King Casmir's ambitions, conflicting prophecies and increasingly dangerous magical intrigues.

A mysterious advertisement promises adventure, but visitors fail to return from Chateau d’If. This collection pairs that unsettling invitation with early tales of espionage, unfamiliar societies, and an amphibious youngster seeking his own path between sea and land.

Glawen Clattuc seeks his captive father while Wayness Tamm pursues the missing charter governing Cadwal. Their separate investigations confront enemies determined to overthrow the Conservancy and open the protected planet to exploitation and settlement.

A new charter has failed to bring peace to Cadwal, instead deepening its political divisions. Glawen Clattuc and his allies must confront rival factions and exiles whose schemes threaten the Conservancy and the planet's protected future.

Adopted after surviving a brutal attack, Jaro grows up with missing memories and a determination to become a spaceman. His search for his origins takes him toward a closed planet with a disturbing history of engineered servitude.

Myron Tany abandons a conventional future to captain his eccentric great-aunt's space yacht. After a quarrel leaves him stranded, work aboard a freighter opens a new journey among the unusual civilizations of the Gaean Reach.

Myron Tany continues traveling aboard the space freighter Glicca, encountering eccentric societies, pilgrims and swindlers across the Gaean Reach. His search for personal fulfillment unfolds through the pleasures and dangers of an unpredictable interstellar voyage.

Five stories from the 1950s combine science fiction adventure, detection, horror, and humor. Alongside The Men Return, the collection includes The Devil on Salvation Bluff, A Practical Man’s Guide, Worlds of Origin, and When the Five Moons Rise.

Jack Vance recalls his life through childhood, Depression-era work, wartime voyages and the beginnings of his writing career. Marriage, travel, California friendships and a lasting love of jazz shape this informal account of his experiences.

This selection of Jack Vance’s shorter fiction spans strange worlds, supernatural possibilities, and unsettling encounters. Stories include his first published work, The World-Thinker, alongside Chateau d’If, Green Magic, The Augmented Agent, and an outline titled Wild Thyme and Violets.

Fourteen shorter works from the first twelve years of Jack Vance's career trace his early development as a storyteller. The collection presents stories written for changing magazine markets while his distinctive imaginative voice took shape.

In Clarges, immortality is awarded through fierce competition for social rank, and failure means death. Gavin Waylock, once among the privileged immortals, emerges from hiding after a murder accusation to reclaim his position against determined opposition.

Scout Adam Reith crash-lands on Tschai after his starship is destroyed and discovers humans dominated by alien races. Seeking his damaged craft, he travels toward the Blue Chasch city of Dadiche, confronting its dangerous social order.

On Koryphon, successive human migrations have produced rival societies and contested claims to land. Jorjol, the self-styled Gray Prince, leads an assault against wealthy landowners, forcing competing visions of justice and history into conflict.

Humans and their enemies breed captive species into monstrous armies, threatening the survival of an aging civilization. The Dragon Masters appears here with The Last Castle and The Miracle Workers, bringing together three of Vance’s tales of conflict and survival.

Showboat captain Apollon Zamp travels the Vissel River toward a royal festival and its lucrative prize. Rival performers, artistic sabotage and the peculiar tastes of local audiences repeatedly disrupt his troupe's theatrical ambitions along the way.

Stranded on Tschai, Adam Reith hopes returning rescued Ylin-Ylan to her father will secure help obtaining a spacecraft. The journey instead forces dangerous choices and brings him into conflict with the enigmatic Wannek and their human servants.

Vance’s first published story anchors this collection of early science fiction, including the novella Telek. Fifteen tales bring together his emerging worlds and shorter narratives, from dream castles and strange temples to displaced beings, mysterious sounds, and unconventional households.

A hotel owner sells parcels of Bird Island to finance badly needed improvements, attracting an eccentric group of buyers. Their incompatible ambitions, secrets and unusual companions disrupt the island's apparent tranquility and produce escalating comic trouble.

A young scientist survives an attempt on his life in Tahiti and identifies the attacker without understanding the motive. Following the suspect aboard an island-hopping schooner leads him toward the secrets behind the attempted murder.

Ten tales span Jack Vance's science fiction and fantasy career, including Miro Hetzel's investigative adventures, The Narrow Land and Son of the Tree. The collection follows travelers and problem solvers through unfamiliar societies and imagined worlds.

Nine Jack Vance stories bring together Golden Girl, Abercrombie Station, Cholwell’s Chickens, and The World Between. The selection ranges across his early short fiction, including When the Five Moons Rise, Meet Miss Universe, and a later tale of Commander Tynnott’s daughter.

Thirteen early Jack Vance stories gather adventures and mysteries ranging from Planet of the Black Dust to Sail 25. The collection also includes The Potters of Firsk, Sjambak, Parapsyche, and tales of visitors, robots, and strange voyages.

A young American art student accepts work caring for a villa in an Italian village. His employer spreads the claim that he is a blackmailer, drawing him into suspicion and intrigue within the local expatriate community.

This omnibus collects the Cadwal trilogy, following Glawen Clattuc and his allies as political factions threaten a protected planet. Personal rivalries, investigations and the struggle over a conservation charter expose competing ambitions for Cadwal's future.

Betty Haverhill boards an Italian freighter seeking freedom and adventure, only to find an unwanted suitor following her at her mother's request. Another passenger's threatening behavior turns her voyage into a dangerous encounter with deception.

After a disfiguring accident, Robert Struve suffers intense social rejection before receiving reconstructive surgery in custody. Years later, women connected to his past are murdered and mutilated, raising questions about the vanished young man's involvement.

After Ausley Wyett leaves prison, men whose testimony secured his conviction receive threatening letters and begin dying in apparent accidents. Sheriff Joe Bain must determine whether revenge explains the deaths despite a lack of obvious evidence.

A detective investigates the murder of a social worker who had been seeking an elusive extortionist known as Mr. Big. Threats against people accused of welfare fraud provide the trail into a disturbing network of secrets.

Sheriff Joe Bain investigates three brutal hammer killings while political attacks threaten his career. A difficult suspect and encounters with the unpredictable Luna add personal complications to an already demanding case in rural San Rodrigo County.

Orphaned Luellen Enright endures abuse while living with relatives in San Francisco, finding comfort in an eccentric neighboring boy. Years later, she sets out to recover her father's stolen vase and seek justice for her mistreatment.

This four-volume omnibus follows stranded Earth scout Adam Reith through the alien societies of Tschai. Seeking a spacecraft to return home, he confronts hostile rulers, enslaved humans and the subterranean Pnume's unsettling interest in preserving him.

Fragments, novel outlines, revised stories, and film treatments reveal unfinished directions in Jack Vance’s writing. The collection includes Cat Island, the original Kragen novella, Wild Thyme and Violets, a Joe Bain mystery outline, and two movie treatments.

Sixteen early space adventures, written between 1946 and 1956, explore Jack Vance's expanding fictional universe. Travelers, traders, colonists and schemers navigate distant worlds along interstellar routes where strange societies create opportunities and unexpected dangers.

This selection of early Jack Vance stories explores unusual mental powers, other realms and the limits of ordinary perception. Its characters approach strange situations through observation and deduction, while confronting possibilities beyond familiar human experience.

King Casmir plans to strengthen Lyonesse through an arranged marriage for his daughter Suldrun, but she refuses his choice. Her confinement in a garden opens a personal drama within the wider political and magical struggles of the Elder Isles.

Stranded on Tschai, Earth scout Adam Reith seeks a way home across territories controlled by rival alien races. This omnibus gathers four adventures in which his resourcefulness challenges dangerous rulers, their human servants and unfamiliar customs.

Six linked adventures unfold on a far-future Earth beneath a fading sun, where forgotten science has given way to magic. Sorcerers, wanderers and seekers pursue artificial life, lost knowledge and perilous desires amid the world's decline.

This substantial collection presents Jack Vance's science fiction and fantasy, including The Dragon Masters and Liane the Wayfarer. Stories of alien societies, magic and unusual adventures offer a broad introduction to his shorter imaginative work.