Black Gate

Brian Aldiss, one of the most brilliant and acclaimed science fiction authors of the 20th Century, produced more than 80 books and some 40 anthologies in a career spanning more than six decades. His first publication, the short story “Criminal Record,” appeared in the July 1954 issue of John Carnell’s British SF magazine Science Fantasy, and his recent anthology The Folio Science Fiction Anthology, was published just last year.

Aldiss’ groundbreaking SF included the novels Non-stop (1958), Hothouse (1962), The Dark Light Years (1964), Barefoot in the Head (1969), The Malacia Tapestry (1976), and The Helliconia Trilogy (1982-85). His most important anthologies and collections include The Saliva Tree and Other Strange Growths (1966), Penguin Science Fiction (1961), The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus (1973), Space Opera (1974), Galactic Empires, Volume 1 & 2 (1976), and six volumes of The Year’s Best Science Fiction (edited with Harry Harrison, 1968-1973). Aldiss received two Hugo Awards, for Hothouse and Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986) [in his acceptance speech, Aldiss famously held the Hugo high and said “It’s been a long time since you’ve given me one of these, you bastards!”], and a Nebula Award for the novella “The Saliva Tree.” His short story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” (1969) was basis for the Steven Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

Our previous coverage of Brian Aldiss includes:

Starship/Non-Stop
Bow Down to Nul
Hell’s Cartographers, edited by Brian W. Aldiss and Harry Harrison
The Digest Enthusiast #6: Hothouse: Brian Aldiss’ Dystopian Odyssey, by Joe Wehrle, Jr.

Brian Aldiss died on Saturday at his home in Oxford. He was 92 years old.

Nancy Willard was the author of more than 70 books, including more than 40 books for children, such as the Anatole trilogy, Firebrat (1988), East of the Sun and West of the Moon: A Play (1989), and Pish, Posh Said Hieronymus Bosch (1991), illustrated by the Dillons. She won the Newbery Award in 1982 for her book of poetry, William Blake’s Inn, illustrated by Alice & Martin Provensen. It was the first book of poetry to win the Newbery.

She also wrote a handful of fantasy novels for adults, including Things Invisible to See (1985), which I bought in Ottawa in the Bantam Spectra paperback edition in 1986 (above left; cover by Todd Schorr). Set in her home town of Ann Arbor in the 1940s, it tells the tale of two brothers who meet a paralyzed young woman, and ends with a baseball game featuring some of the sport’s most famous players. Sister Water (1993) was called “Heavenly…Marvelous… A kind of miracle,” by People magazine (see the back cover of the Wayne State edition here).

Nancy Willard was born on June 26, 1936 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, and became a professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1965. She retired from Vassar in 2013. Her last children’s book will be released this fall. She died peacefully at her home in Poughkeepsie on February 19. She was 80 years old. Read her obituary at the Poughkeepsie Journal.

SF author and critic Ed Bryant died yesterday after a lengthy illness.

Bryant wrote a single novel, Phoenix Without Ashes (1975), a collaboration with Harlan Ellison. As an author he was best known for his short fiction, including his Nebula Award-winning stories “Stone” (1978) and “giANTS” (1979). His collections include Among the Dead and Other Events Leading Up to the Apocalypse (1973), Cinnabar (1976, cover by Lou Feck), and Particle Theory (1981, cover by Richard Powers), which contained both “Stone” and “giANTS.” His most recent collection was Predators and Other Stories (2014), from ReAnimus Press. He was a contributor to the Wild Cards shared world series, and was featured on the cover of issue #0 of Pulphouse magazine (1991).

But Bryant’s most significant contribution to the field, and certainly the way I came to know him best, was through his reviews. He had long-running review columns in Locus (for nearly two decades, 1989-2007), The Twilight Zone magazine (1987-89), and Cemetery Dance (1990-98), and published reviews in Vertex, TaleBones, and many other places. Bryant’s columns were frequently the first features I read in many of my favorite magazines. He was an insightful and prolific critic with a keen appreciation for a good tale, as well as a frequent convention-goer. His numerous convention reports in Locus were always entertaining, and did a great deal to promote science fiction conventions across the country.

Ed Bryant died on February 10th in North Denver, from complications of Type 1 Diabetes. He was 71.

Richard Adams, one of the finest fantasy authors of the 20th Century, died on Christmas Eve.

In his review of Adams’ masterpiece Watership Down, published here at Black Gate yesterday, Mark Rigney wrote, “It was and is a fantasy with wide crossover appeal, a mythic adventure with rabbits… 1972 did indeed mark the appearance of a great story. Nor has it lost its power, not one whit.” According to the BBC, Adams created the story to keep his two daughters entertained on a long car ride.

The event that changed Richard Adams’ life occurred on a car journey with his family to see Twelfth Night at Stratford-upon-Avon.

His bored children asked for a story and he began telling them a tale about a group of rabbits attempting to escape from their threatened warren.

Adams was persuaded to write it all down, a process that took him more than two years, but he was, at first, unable to find a publisher. Many of his rejection letters complained that the book was too long and his characters did not fit the common perception of cuddly bunnies. Eventually, in 1972, after 14 rejections, the publisher Rex Collings saw the potential and agreed to take it on with an initial print run of 2,500 copies.

Watership Down was his first novel. It was published in 1972 — without an advance — when Adams was 52 years old. It won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize, and has sold tens of millions of copies.

Adams became a full time writer in 1974, producing over a dozen fiction and non-fiction books, including several worldwide bestsellers such as Shardik (1974), The Plague Dogs (1977), The Girl in a Swing (1980), Maia (1984) and Tales from Watership Down (1996). He died on December 24, 2016, at age 96.

Sheri S. Tepper, the prolific fantasy author who was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement last year, died on Saturday.

Sheri S. Tepper was the author of dozens of popular fantasy and science fiction novels. Her first published novel was King’s Blood Four (1983), which became part of an ambitious 12-novel series set in The True Game universe, and which spanned her entire career. The seres included The True Game trilogy, the Mavin Manyshaped trilogy, the Jinian trilogy, and the Plague of Angels trilogy, which wrapped up with Fish Tails (2014). She authored many other popular series, including The Marianne Trilogy, the Ettison novels, The Awakeners novels, and especially the Marjorie Westriding trilogy, which began with the Hugo-nominated Grass in 1989.

Tepper’s standalone novels included The Revenants (1984), After Long Silence (1987), The Gate to Women’s Country (1988), The Locus Award-winner Beauty (1991), Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (1996), The Visitor (2002), and The Companions (2003). In his tribute to Tepper this week, John Scalzi writes:

She was one of my favorite science fiction and fantasy writers, and an influence on my thinking about SF/F writing… Her novel Grass has the sort of epic worldbuilding and moral drive that ranks it, in my opinion, with works like Dune and Perdido Street Station and the Earthsea series; the (very) loose sequel to Grass, Raising the Stones, is in many ways even better… If you haven’t read Grass, I really suggest you find it and put it near the top of your SF/F reading queue. You won’t be disappointed… It’s a stone classic.

Tepper began publishing poems and children’s stories in the early 60s under the name Sheri S. Eberhart. Her first genre appearance was the poem “Lullaby, 1990” in the December 1963 Galaxy. Her 1989 novella “The Gardener” was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. She was 87 years old. See our prior coverage of her work here.