The Literary In Memoriam Thread

[OSJ]

This one really hurts, my wife just came in to tell me that my friend Dallas Mayr (better known as "Jack Ketchum") had died of cancer this morning in New York. One of the kindest, most generous-spirited human beings I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, he built a very solid career as the author of several extremely disturbing horror novels including The Girl Next Door, Offspring, Off-season, She Wakes, Lost, The Woman and others. His amazing short fiction included pieces such as Right to Life, "The Box", & "The Rifle" and much of his best work appears in the collection Peaceable Kingdom. A big "Fuck You!" to cancer, Dallas, you will be missed.

With Ursula Le Guin also passing, this has the makings of a very shitty week. I only met Ms. Le Guin once, would have been when she was an instructor at Clarion West in the early 1970s. She came to the regular Friday night meeting/party of the Nameless Twos (Seattle's very loose-knit SF group, basically served as an excuse for like-minded folks to get fucked up at Horizon Books after hours). Seemed to be a very nice lady, sat on the floor smoking her hash-pipe and chatting with one and all.  A damn fine writer, hard to imagine the field without her presence.

[Curt McGirt]

Sorry for your loss, John. I bought my buddy Austin a copy of Off Season this past Xmas... RIP

[bobholly138]

1 hour ago, OSJ said:

This one really hurts, my wife just came in to tell me that my friend Dallas Mayr (better known as "Jack Ketchum") had died of cancer this morning in New York. One of the kindest, most generous-spirited human beings I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, he built a very solid career as the author of several extremely disturbing horror novels including The Girl Next Door, Offspring, Off-season, She Wakes, Lost, The Woman and others. His amazing short fiction included pieces such as Right to Life, "The Box", & "The Rifle" and much of his best work appears in the collection Peaceable Kingdom. A big "Fuck You!" to cancer, Dallas, you will be missed.

With Ursula Le Guin also passing, this has the makings of a very shitty week. I only met Ms. Le Guin once, would have been when she was an instructor at Clarion West in the early 1970s. She came to the regular Friday night meeting/party of the Nameless Twos (Seattle's very loose-knit SF group, basically served as an excuse for like-minded folks to get fucked up at Horizon Books after hours). Seemed to be a very nice lady, sat on the floor smoking her hash-pipe and chatting with one and all.  A damn fine writer, hard to imagine the field without her presence.

I just saw that Jack Ketchum had passed. I didn't discover him until back in 2008. And since then managed to get 90% of his books. Last year my father got back into reading so I loaned him a copy of Red. After reading it in one day he wanted more Ketchum. And for the first time in his life my father went to a book store and bought one copy of every Ketchum book they had. I sent Mr Ketchum a quick message about this on FB and got a fairly prompt reply. Seems Jack found it amusing that he had gained a new fan and a fan that was at the time about 4 years older than Mr Ketchum.

The world of fiction has suffered a huge loss.

[J.T.]

I was sad to hear about Ursula K. LeGuin. 

A Wizard of Earthsea was the subject of my first book report as a kid in elementary school and The Sparrowhawk is one of my all time favorite literary characters.

RIP to one of the true Giants In The Earth.

[OSJ]

12 hours ago, bobholly138 said:

I just saw that Jack Ketchum had passed. I didn't discover him until back in 2008. And since then managed to get 90% of his books. Last year my father got back into reading so I loaned him a copy of Red. After reading it in one day he wanted more Ketchum. And for the first time in his life my father went to a book store and bought one copy of every Ketchum book they had. I sent Mr Ketchum a quick message about this on FB and got a fairly prompt reply. Seems Jack found it amusing that he had gained a new fan and a fan that was at the time about 4 years older than Mr Ketchum.

The world of fiction has suffered a huge loss.

Thanks for posting that! 

A couple of brief anecdotes about Dallas, at the World Horror Con in Atlanta when I was hanging out with Raven, I introduced them (Dallas was a big pro wrestling fan) and he insisted on taking a back-drop from Raven. A feat easily accomplished as Dallas weighed maybe 170 lbs. ;-)

Same convention he pulled his notorious "15 minute trick" on Tim Lebbon. To preface the track, just as a wise man does not smoke weed with Willie, by the same token a smart person does not drink scotch with Jack Ketchum. Okay the trick is this, Dallas rushes into a party with a fifth of scotch in hand and spots a likely victim, in this case Welsh author Tim Lebbon (a man who can hold his liquor, but was in no way prepared for what was about to transpire...) Dallas spots Tim and with a panicked expression calls out "Tim, I need your help, NOW!" Tim being the good guy that he is follows Dallas into the hall to see how he might be of assistance. Dallas produces the bottle, opens it and exclaims "I have to be on a panel, we need to finish this in fifteen minutes!" Now if you stop to think about this, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever, but Dallas seemed so desperate and so fucking sincere that the hapless victim wouldn't ask any questions, but would start guzzling the scotch along with Dallas. Dallas it must be said had a tolerance for scotch equaled only by Peter Straub, I've seen him put down a fifth and seem absolutely unimpaired and then head out to make the rounds of publishers' parties. Anyway, of course the end result in this case was that after fifteen minutes poor Tim was bouncing off the walls while Dallas wandered off to find another party...

[grilledcheese]

I just read about Ketchum, what a bummer. I read Off Season when I was like 13, and it changed my life. I was already a stone cold horror nerd, but that book allowed me to realize that as much as I liked slashers and Giallo and ghost stories and whatnot on screen, there is nothing more fucking terrifying / unsettling than a person with real skill leading you on a story word by word.

[odessasteps]

RIP Mort Walker, age 94.

https://www.newsfromme.com/2018/01/27/mort-walker-r-i-p/

[OSJ]

This one's another punch to the gut. Kate Wilhelm was taken from us far too soon as the youngest 89 year-old I've had the pleasure of knowing. She'd been writing science fiction one year longer than I've been on the planet, though she always said that she didn't consider herself to be a writer until 1965 when you could go to the library and see a book with her name on the spine. I knew that her health hadn't been the greatest these last few months as she went from cheerfully signing a small stack of books that I mailed her to being unable to sign autograph pages for the collection of hers that I was preparing for the Centipede Press Masters of Science Fiction series. About this book(s), I will absolutely not stand for it being called a "memorial" collection as Kate was very much alive and involved in the selection process as I put this thing together. Call it rather a "Celebratory Volume", recognizing her sixty years in the field. I think Kate would like that a lot more than "memorial volume", which sounds far too grim and dour for the author involved as even her saddest stories, the ones that rip your heart out, are still, ultimately, life affirming and dealing with that innate goodness  that makes us, in the final analysis a pretty damn good species for all our foibles.  Kate Wilhelm was 89 years young when she left us, young because she saw the future and what we could and ultimately should be and she was nice enough to tell us about what she saw. The natural tendency is to  think of the world as a poorer place without her, but the reality is that we've all been enriched by virtue of her having been among us for nearly nine decades. RIP, Kate and thank you for all the stories.