Thursday 11 September 2014

RIP Graham Joyce

I was saddened yesterday to hear of the passing on Tuesday of SF and fantasy novelist Graham Joyce from lymphoma. He was only 59 years old.



Joyce published his first novel in 1991 and went on to write a further twenty-one books. These included a semi-memoir (Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular) and several highly critically acclaimed novels, including The Tooth Fairy, The Facts of Life, The Limits of Enchantment, Memoirs of a Master Forger, The Silent Land and Some Kind of Fairytale. He won the British Fantasy Award five times and the World Fantasy Award once. He taught writing at Nottingham Trent University and last year spearheaded a campaign to petition for the removal of Michael Gove (the former British Secretary of State for Education, horrendously incompetent at his job and recently removed from his position), attracting more than 100,000 supporters.

I never met Graham Joyce (although I believe we were in the same room on a number of occasions) but I have enjoyed the novels of his that I have read. I will now have to seek out more. His colleague and friend Conrad Williams also has a tribute to him here, whilst the above link to The Guardian collects together many more tributes and quotes.

Condolences his to his friends and family. The world of fantasy fiction is now a slightly dimmer place.


Bibliography
Dreamside (1991)
Dark Sister (1992)
House of Lost Dreams (1993)
Requiem (1995)
The Tooth Fairy (1996)
The Stormwatcher (1997)
The Web: Spiderbite (1997)
Indigo (1999)
Smoking Poppy (2001)
The Facts of Life (2002)
Partial Eclipse and Other Stories (2003)
The Limits of Enchantment (2005)
TWOC (2005)
Do the Creepy Thing (2006)
Three Ways to Snog an Alien (2008)
Memoirs of a Master Forger (2008)
Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular (2009)
The Devil's Ladder (2009)
Tales for a Dark Evening (2011)
The Silent Land (2011)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale (2012)
The Year of the Ladybird (2013, published in the USA as The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit)

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