The Bodhisattva

The power of the word, books, reading and writing always hit you hardest on the most unfortunate occasions. I don’t know the man, never met him, there are words by those who did (Ellen Datlow,  and Patrick Nielsen Hayden)  and as I sit here being a part of a hobby that often talks about undermentioned or under-appreciated writers, I get this even more pronounced feeling than I had when the wonderful John M.Ford passed away in 2006. Even though at times you got the feeling the man was laughing at you, he was such a powerful writer - and I’m going to stop now, as a quote I saw (posted by Scott Edleman- and now everywhere) by John Clute (from the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) just perfectly puts it:

Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distant mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, Thomas M. Disch has been perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern first-rank SF writers.

I always thought that recently we had entered a time in movie film making that some ballsy, astute director would discover a Disch novel and at least as a creative mind/force he would get the recognition his work deserves, even if it brought to light some of eccentricities we see others who knew him are speaking on. I recommend everybody who hasn’t yet, to go pick up a Disch book, if you are prepared to be affected. It’s odd, some may know I collect copies of Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine and it’s where you will find some early Disch work (along with Camp Concentration) and it just reminds that this is a writer that was there when SF took it’s second step, I find myself somewhat sad that he won’t be around to see what he’d probably think was the third and I can’t escape the feeling like we lost a writer, and not simply somebody who had some (or een many) publishing credits during their lives.

Here is the New York Times obituary. I don’t know, I think maybe I was hoping this was some awkward miscommunication waiting to be revealed until I saw something ‘official’. My condolences to his family and friends and to Science Fiction for a loss of some that stuff dreams were made of.