I thought that automobiles were going to have mufflers and go fast and airplanes were going to fly fast.

With the death of his grandfather the Vance's family fortune nosedived and Vance was forced to leave junior college and work to support himself assisting his mother when able. After working on a degaussing crew for a period he left about a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor. " The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made Vance its 14th Grand Master in 1997 and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001.

He has also written 11 mystery novels as John Holbrook Vance and three as Ellery Queen and has once each used pseudonyms Alan Wade Peter Held John van See and Jay Kavanse. Most of his work has been publiJack Vanced under the name Jack Vance. A 2009 profile in the New York Times Magazine described Vance as "one of American literature’s most distinctive and undervalued voices.