About the Author

Jack Vance was born in 1916 and studied mining engineering and journalism at the University of California. During the Second World War he served in the merchant navy and was torpedoed twice. He started contributing stories to the pulp magazines in the mid 1940s and published his first book, THE DYING EARTH, in 1950. Among his many books are THE DRAGON MASTER, for which he won his first HUGO, BIG PLANET, THE ANOME, and the Lyonesse sequence.