“Jack Vance is both large and heavy”

The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of Our Time (Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer and John-Henri Holmberg)

- Highlight Loc. 1685-89  | Added on Monday, July 04, 2011, 02:05 AM

Stieg had attended ScanCon, the 1976 Stockholm science fiction convention, and after the final party, he had agreed to get the guest of honor, author Jack Vance, back to his hotel, an experience he later claimed almost cost him his life. “Jack Vance is both large and heavy,” he wrote, “and at the time was also drunk as a skunk. At no time during the drive did he even seem to wonder about my suffocated and panicky gasps every time the cab made a left turn and centrifugal forces inexorably pushed Vance on top of me. I have never since been able to read one of his novels without a heavy weight settling on my chest.”