Editing Dying Earth (section)

==Origins==

Vance wrote the stories of the first book while he served in the [[United States Merchant Marine]] during [[World War II]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=This is Me, Jack Vance|author=Jack Vance|page=65|isbn=978-1-59606-245-0|year=2009|publisher=Subterranen Press}}</ref> In the late 1940s several of his other stories were published in magazines.<!-- source is our biography [[Jack Vance#Work]] but were these his first written works that have been published? -->

Science fiction historian [[Brian Stableford]] has noted the influence of [[Clark Ashton Smith]] and his "Zothique" stories on the "Dying Earth" series. <ref>Stableford, Brian. ''Science Fact and Science Fiction : An Encyclopedia''. Routledge, New York, 2006. {{ISBN|9780415974608}} (p. 122) </ref> 

<!-- copy from our biography [[Jack Vance#Literary influences]] but what [[Dying Earth (subgenre)]] works did he read? -->
According to pulp editor Sam Merwin, Vance's earliest magazine submissions in the 1940s were heavily influenced by the style of [[James Branch Cabell]].<ref>Lin Carter, ''Imaginary Worlds'', New York: Ballantine Books, 1973, p. 151. {{ISBN|978-0345033093}}</ref> Fantasy historian [[Lin Carter]] has noted several probable lasting influences of Cabell on Vance's work, and suggests that the early "pseudo-Cabell" experiments bore fruit in ''The Dying Earth'' (1950).<ref>Carter, pp. 151-53.</ref>