Black Gate

Julian May, fan and bestselling science fiction writer, died this week at her home in Bellevue, Washington.

Julian May was active in US fandom in the 40s and early 50. She published her first story, “Dune Roller,” in the December 1951 Astounding; it was filmed as The Cremators in 1972. She was the first woman to chair a Worldcon, with the Tenth World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1952. The next year she married T.E. Dikty, co-editor (with Everett F. Bleiler) of The Best Science Fiction Stories, the first Year’s Best SF anthology. Over the next few decades she wrote 250 books, chiefly non-fiction books for young readers and adults, including A Gazeteer of the Hyborian World of Conan (1977, under the name Lee N Falconer).

In 1976 May began attending SF conventions again, starting with Westercon 29 in Los Angeles. She wore an elaborate diamond-encrusted space suit to the costume party, and started sketching ideas for who might actually wear such a suit. In 1978 she began writing what became the Saga of Pliocene Exile, the tale of a group of refugees from the twenty-second century who flee six million years into Earth’s past, only to discover two alien species in deadly conflict with humans who’ve already arrived.

May demonstrated an immediate talent for ambitious SF series, and turned that 4-volume saga into essentially into an extensive prelude for Galactic Milieu sequence: Intervention (1987) Jack the Bodiless (1992), Diamond Mask (1994) and Magnificat (1996). Her other work includes three trilogies: Trillium (written with Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley, published 1990-97), The Rampart Worlds (1998-2001), and Boreal Moon (2003-06). The Science Fiction Encyclopedia calls her work “at times reminiscent of the Planetary-Romance Baroque of Roger Zelazny.”

May was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame at the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention in 2015. She died on October 17, 2017. She was 86 years old.

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.