I'm working on an anthology of Jack Vance's pulp sci-fi advenure novellas, _Planet of Adventure_. I picked it up based on my love of a similar anthology called _Alastor_, which I read sometime in the early aughts.
What I admire most and hope to emulate is Vance's lyrical treatment of adventure stories. More specifically how beautifully he renders passages of action--because that's all it is, a series of action scenes. There is little (if any) interiority, but the sentences are brilliant and his clever shorthand ensures a brisk pace. If anyone could have translated Star Wars into a lyrical prose piece it would have been Vance.
The main weakness are the damsel-in-distress scenarios that play out again and again, and the messianic white man trope that so many critics took the film _Avatar_ to task for--a white man enters a foreign culture, masters it, shows the culture the error of its ways, and then dominates it. Vance wrote these novellas in the late 60's, so maybe we can forgive him more easily than we can James Cameron. But it's definitely worth pointing out lest you fall into the same writing trap.
Bottom line: Read Vance to learn how to render action and move your plot along. Be wary of his old-fashioned politics.
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