R.I.P. Thread for authors and other literary figures

[Myshkin]

15 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Milan Kundera, author of 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', dies aged 94

Well, fuck

[Ormond]

Here is a link to Locus's obituary for author Sydney J. Van Scyoc:

https://locusmag.com/2023/07/sydney-j-van-scyoc-19329-2023/

[Ormond]

Science fiction author Michael Flynn, who won several awards during his career including a Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2003, has died at age 76:

https://locusmag.com/2023/10/michael-flynn-1947-2023/

[Ormond]

Michael Bishop died November 13.

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/michael-bishop-1945-2023/

I am very saddened by this. I love Bishop's 1988 award-winning novel Unicorn Mountain, which I think is one of the best early treatments of AIDS/HIV in speculative literature.  

The "Locus" article just says that his son Jamie pre-deceased him. Unfortunately, that was a tragic blow, as he was one of the persons killed at the VIrginia Tech mass shooting in 2007:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Bishop#:~:text=Christopher James Bishop (November 9,in the Virginia Tech shooting.

[Ran]

Terrific writer. A loss to the genre. I remember well the news of his son's death in that mass shooting, and the outpouring of love and support for Bishop at that time.

[Zorral]

A.S. Byatt, age 87.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/books/as-byatt-dead.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/17/as-byatt-author-and-critic-dies-aged-87

One of my favorite fiction writers of the 20th century, along with Hilary Mantel.

[Ormond]

Science fiction and fantasy author David Drake has died at age 78:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/david-drake-1945-2023/

I read Lord of the Isles, first book in Drake's six-volume fantasy series, many years ago. I remember it as being "only OK", but he obviously had his fans, and from the obituary it seems he was really better known for his science fiction. Has anyone here read other titles by David Drake?

[hauberk]

On 12/17/2023 at 3:44 PM, Ormond said:

Science fiction and fantasy author David Drake has died at age 78:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/david-drake-1945-2023/

I read Lord of the Isles, first book in Drake's six-volume fantasy series, many years ago. I remember it as being "only OK", but he obviously had his fans, and from the obituary it seems he was really better known for his science fiction. Has anyone here read other titles by David Drake?

I’ve read most of his catalog. His fantasy works were very much informed by his study of the Greek classics while his science fiction was initially informed by his experience in Vietnam as well as some touch of the classics and a long running SF take on O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin books. 
 

I’ll miss him greatly. 
 

ETA:  I’ll note that Redliners may be one of my favorite of his SF works and represented a moment in his career where he seems to have moved past his PTSD.  Also, Rolling Hot, one of his Hammer’s Slammers books, has needed to be adapted into a movie for years. 

Edited December 19, 2023 by hauberk

[Zorral]

J.G.A. Pocock, Historian Who Argued for Historical Context, Dies at 99
He helped forge a movement asserting that scholars must put aside their modern-day assumptions and prejudices to fully understand how people acted and thought in the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/books/jga-pocock-dead.html

Quote

 

.... His approach to establishing historical context began with language.

“Pocock’s central contention,” the Oxford historian Keith Thomas wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1986, “is that a work of political thought can only be understood if the reader is aware of the contemporary linguistic constraints to which its author was subject, for these constraints prescribed both his subject matter and the way in which that subject matter was conceptualized.”

He added: “There is, of course, nothing very novel about this contention as such, for historians of literature and ideas have always been aware that writers work within particular traditions of thought. But its application to the history of political ideas forms a great contrast to the assumptions of the 1950s, when it was widely thought that the close reading of a text by an analytic philosopher was sufficient to establish its meaning, even though the philosopher was quite innocent of any knowledge of the period in which the text was written or of the linguistic traditions within which its author operated.” ....

 

 

[Ormond]

Richard Bowes, who won two World Fantasy awards for short stories and a Lambda Literary award for his 1999 novel Minions of the Moon, died December 24:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/richard-bowes-1944-2023/

[SpaceChampion]

Terry Bisson died yesterday at 81.

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/11/science-fiction-author-terry-bisson-dead-at-81.html

Edited January 11 by SpaceChampion

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Terry Bisson died yesterday at 81.

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/11/science-fiction-author-terry-bisson-dead-at-81.html

Here is Locus's obituary for Terry Bisson:

https://locusmag.com/2024/01/terry-bisson-1942-2024/

[Ormond]

Science fiction author Tom Purdom died January 14 at age 87:

https://locusmag.com/2024/01/tom-purdom-1936-2024/

His first novel, I Want The Stars, was published in 1964 and was one of the first science fiction novels to feature a protagonist who was not White. It was republished in 2020.

https://journeypress.com/titles/i-want-the-stars/

[Werthead]

Howard Waldrop has passed. A noted short story author, and one of George RR Martin's best friends. He penned the very first Wild Cards story back in 1987.

https://locusmag.com/2024/01/howard-waldrop-1946-2024/

[Ran]

Per File770 and Lawrence Person and his obit, Waldrop passed away from a stroke on the 14th. A great loss, he was charming with his Texan twang and his odd-ball sense of humor that was very much on display in stories like "The Ugly Chicken". File 770 links through to the Wild Cards World interview with Waldrop, where he discusses how Jetboy came to be a part of the Wild Cards universe, told in Waldrop's very Texan style.

RIP, H'ard. Ten years ago, he joined George and the late Gardner Dozois on stage at Capclave. A fun watch as the three long-time friends reminisce and joke around with one another. You can see it on Youtube here.

Person mentions unfinished works that Waldrop may have left behind. But recently, George produced the short comedic SF film Night of the Cooters which has seen play in the festival circuit and which I believe they're now negotiating streaming, and back in late 2022 he was producing another Waldrop adaptation, of "The Ugly Chickens", starring Felicia Day which I think must now be in post-production or perhaps in the can and waiting a festival run of its own. George has at least one more Waldrop story lined up for adaptation, titled Friends Forever which I am pretty sure is adapting "Heirs of the Perisphere" with some of the characters having their identities changed to escape the long arm of the Mouse.

Vaguely recall I was told what the fourth Waldrop film project was, but I'm blanking at the moment.

 

ETA: Ah, never mind, found it (PDF): they already filmed an adaptation of "Mary Margaret Road-Grader" back in late 2022, but guess that's another taking its time with post or festival schedules. 

 

Edited January 16 by Ran

[Ormond]

Here is a link to the Locus obituary for British horror author Brian Lumley, who died January 2:

https://locusmag.com/2024/01/brian-lumley-1937-2024/

[Werthead]

Christopher Priest has passed away.

One of Britain's finest writers of the fantastic, whose novels were challenging, interesting and difficult to pin down.

His best-known work was The Prestige (adapted for the screen by Chris Nolan in 2006, with Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman), but his actual best book is highly debatable: The Prestige has a claim, as does The Affirmation, a twisting time loop novel which can be reread as its own sequel. The Separation is also up there. He also had a knack for predicting genres: The Space Machine was a steampunk novel published in 1975 and A Dream of Wessex was a cyberpunk novel published in 1977.

He had a rather interesting career with large gaps in publication (the largest spanning eleven years) followed by explosive outbursts of creativity; he published nothing between 2002 and 2011, but then seven novels between 2011 and 2023. To pay bills he apparently wrote a large number of movie tie-ins and adaptations under various pen-names, but the only ones he ever admitted to were Mona Lisa and, amusingly, Short Circuit (he also did eXistneZ, but seemed to genuinely like that one and put it out under his own name).

The fact he died shortly before the final publication of The Last Dangerous Visions, a work whose lengthy gestation he criticised in The Book on the Edge of Forever, which pissed Harlan Ellison off to the point he'd try to have dealers stocking the book thrown out of conventions, is a strong argument for the existence of cosmic irony. He actually died close to fifty years exactly after Ellison started dicking around his story "An Infinite Summer" for the collection ("An Infinite Summer" later spawned The Dream Archipelago series, Priest's signature setting, so its rescue from Ellison's event horizon had career-defining results).

Time for a rewatch of The Prestige, I think (not that you ever need an excuse for that).

Edited February 3 by Werthead

[Ormond]

British author Brian Stableford died February 24:

https://locusmag.com/2024/02/brian-stableford-1948-2024/

[Ormond]

The fantasy and "ghostly mystery" author Jaime Lee Moyer has died:

https://locusmag.com/2024/03/jaime-lee-moyer-found-deceased/

https://reactormag.com/author-jaime-lee-moyer-has-passed-away/

 

[RedEyedGhost]

On 2/3/2024 at 6:24 AM, Werthead said:

Christopher Priest has passed away.

One of Britain's finest writers of the fantastic, whose novels were challenging, interesting and difficult to pin down.

His best-known work was The Prestige (adapted for the screen by Chris Nolan in 2006, with Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman), but his actual best book is highly debatable: The Prestige has a claim, as does The Affirmation, a twisting time loop novel which can be reread as its own sequel. The Separation is also up there. He also had a knack for predicting genres: The Space Machine was a steampunk novel published in 1975 and A Dream of Wessex was a cyberpunk novel published in 1977.

He had a rather interesting career with large gaps in publication (the largest spanning eleven years) followed by explosive outbursts of creativity; he published nothing between 2002 and 2011, but then seven novels between 2011 and 2023. To pay bills he apparently wrote a large number of movie tie-ins and adaptations under various pen-names, but the only ones he ever admitted to were Mona Lisa and, amusingly, Short Circuit (he also did eXistneZ, but seemed to genuinely like that one and put it out under his own name).

The fact he died shortly before the final publication of The Last Dangerous Visions, a work whose lengthy gestation he criticised in The Book on the Edge of Forever, which pissed Harlan Ellison off to the point he'd try to have dealers stocking the book thrown out of conventions, is a strong argument for the existence of cosmic irony. He actually died close to fifty years exactly after Ellison started dicking around his story "An Infinite Summer" for the collection ("An Infinite Summer" later spawned The Dream Archipelago series, Priest's signature setting, so its rescue from Ellison's event horizon had career-defining results).

Time for a rewatch of The Prestige, I think (not that you ever need an excuse for that).

Real sad to see this.  Watching Masters of the Air has been making me want to read The Separation again.