The influences which underlie these stories go back to when I was ten or eleven years old and subscribed to Weird Tales magazine. My favorite writer was C. L. Moore, whom to this day I revere. My mother had a taste for romantic fantasy, and she collected books by an Edwardian writer called Robert Chambers, who is now all but forgotten. He wrote such novels as The King in Yellow, The Maker of Moons, The Tracer of Lost Persons and many others. Also on our bookshelves were the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, as well as Tarzan of the Apes and the Barsoom sequences of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Around this same time Hugo Gernsback began publishing Amazing Stories Monthly and Amazing Stories Quarterly; I devoured both on a regular basis. The fairy tales of Lord Dunsany, an Irish peer, were also a substantial influence; and I cannot ignore the great Jeffery Farnol, another forgotten author, who wrote romantic swashbucklers. In short, it is fair to say that almost everything I read in my early years became transmuted into some aspect of my own style.

Many years after the first publication of The Dying Earth, I used the same setting for the adventures of Cugel and Rhialto, although these books are quite different from the original tales in mood and atmosphere. It is nice to hear that these stories continue to live in the minds of readers and writers alike. To both, and to everyone concerned with the production of this collection, I tip my hat in thanks and appreciation. And to the reader specifically, I promise that you, upon turning the page, will be much entertained.

— Jack Vance

Oakland, 2008

Robert Silverberg