Black Gate

Sara Warneke, the Australian fantasy author who wrote under the name Sara Douglass, died of ovarian cancer on September 27, 2011, at the age of 54.

Sara wrote a total of 19 novels, beginning with the first book of what became The Axis Trilogy, BattleAxe, in 1995.

All told she wrote five major fantasy series: The Axis Trilogy, The Wayfarer Redemption, The Crucible, The Troy Game, and Darkglass Mountain.

Outside of Australia, The Axis Trilogy and The Wayfarer Redemption were combined into a single six-book series, called simply Wayfarer Redemption.

Sara also wrote Beyond the Hanging Wall (1996), Threshold (1997), The Devil’s Diadem (2011), and the non-fiction The Betrayal of Arthur. The Hall of Lost Footsteps, a collection of short stories, is due from Ticonderoga Publications this year.

Sara was born in Penola, South Australia, and attended Annesley College in Wayville. She became a registered nurse, and eventually completed her Ph.D. in early modern English History. She was a lecturer in medieval history at La Trobe University in Bendigo, where she completed her first novel, BattleAxe, in 1995.

Her Wikipedia entry, with a complete listing and links for her novels, is here.

She lived in Tasmania, and was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008. She underwent successful treatment that year, but the cancer returned in 2010.

Martin H. Greenberg, one of the most prolific creators in the history of the genre, died last week.

Dr. Martin H. Greenberg received a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Connecticut in 1969, and taught at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, from 1975 until 1996. In 1974 he edited his first anthology (with Patricia Warrick): Political Science Fiction, intended as a teaching guide.

It was to be the first of literally thousands of books he published over the next 36 years, the vast majority of them science fiction and fantasy anthologies.

Greenberg’s specialty was copyright searches and handling author royalties, and he was famously adept at both. He founded book packager Tekno Books, which typically produced 150 titles per year, totaling over 2,300 books.

Shortly after he entered the field Greenberg discovered he shared a name with another famed SF anthologist: Martin Greenberg, publisher of Gnome Press, who edited some of the most influential science fiction anthologies of the 1950s, including Travelers of Space and Journey to Infinity (both 1951). In his autobiography Isaac Asimov, who worked extensively with both men, said he suggested that he call himself “Martin H. Greenberg” or “Martin Harry Greenberg,” which he did.

Greenberg frequently partnered with other editors such as Joseph D. Olander, Andre Norton, Robert Silverberg, and especially Asimov, with whom he co-edited a total 127 anthologies, including the 25-volume Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories.

In recent years Greenberg, working chiefly with editors Jean Rabe, John Helfers, Kerrie Hughes and others at Tekno Books, produced 10 original anthologies per year for DAW books, often referred to as “the DAW magazine.”

Black Gate contributor Mike Resnick,  who edited 19 anthologies for or with Greenberg and sold him a total of 61 stories, shared this story of how their partnership started:

We’re eating lunch at the 1989 Boston worldcon, he asks what I’m working on, I say a Teddy Roosevelt alternate history novella, and as we’re getting up he says he’s off to sell our anthology. I say what anthology? He says Alternate Presidents, with Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 and a bunch of others. I say I didn’t know we were talking about one, and besides, this one’s unsaleable.

Three hours later he hunts me up: “We’ve sold it to Tor for a 5-figure advance, and you’re editing it.” I never doubted him again.

In 2009 Greenberg was the recipient of one of the first Solstice Awards presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) in recognition of his contributions to the field.

For a complete list of his titles (caution: it’s a big list), see his entry at the SF Encyclopedia.

Diana Wynne Jones, author of dozens of fantasy books including Howl’s Moving Castle, Archer’s Goon, Hexwood, and Dark Lord of Derkholm, died on Saturday, March 26, 2011.

The first Diana Wynne Jones novel I ever bought was Howl’s Moving Castle, in 1986. Everyone at the science fiction bookstore where I shopped — the House of Speculative Fiction, in Ottawa, Canada — was talking about it, and Pat Caven the owner pressed it into my hands.  It was by no means the last.

Jones studied English at St Anne’s College in Oxford, where she famously attended lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis before she graduated in 1956. She began her writing career with plays, and had three produced in London between 1967 and 1970.

In 1970 she switched to prose with her first novel, Changeover, a comedy marketed for adults. She began writing for young adults with her second book, Wilkins’ Tooth (1973, published in the US as Witch’s Business), and never looked back.

Although Jones is widely admired as a YA fantasy writer, she had a surprising range. Perhaps my favorite of her books is The Tough Guide To Fantasyland (1996), a hysterical tourist guide which skewers dozens of fantasy clichés as it catalogues the common places, weird items, people, governments, and situations readers are likely to encounter as they journey through a typical fantasy novel.

Her later novel Dark Lord of Derkholm (1999), set in a Fantasyland which steadfastly adheres to the conventions she described,  is seen by some as a conceptual sequel to The Tough Guide.

Jones was nominated — and won — numerous awards in her lifetime. Her novel Archers Goon was nominated for a World Fantasy Award; The Tough Guide To Fantasyland was nominated for both a Hugo award and a World Fantasy Award, and Dark Lord of Derkholm won the 1999 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. The same year she won the Karl Edward Wagner Award in the UK.

She received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2007, perhaps the highest honor our field has to offer.

Her novels have enjoyed extended life in other media: Archer’s Goon became a BBC television serial in 1992, and Howl’s Moving Castle was famously adapted as an animated feature by Hayao Miyazaki in 2004.

Jones continued to work until late in life, publishing her last novel, Enchanted Glass, last year. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, and died on March 26, 2011.