It’s always sad to learn that a beloved author has (after a long and fruitful life and career) passed away. What’s perhaps even sadder (from the viewpoints of both author and reader) is discovering that a promising author whose career was barely started has suddenly and irreversibly died. What might they have achieved had they survived? We’ll never know.
There are far too many examples one might draw upon, unfortunately. Despite frequent exhortations on my part to authors that they refrain from expiring, we’ve lost many great talents far too soon. The five authors who follow are but the tip of the iceberg.
Stanley G. Weinbaum (April 4, 1902–December 14, 1935)
While Weinbaum was not averse to moments of super-science and fantasy, many of his stories could be seen as early examples of what later was termed hard science fiction, or at least verisimilitudinous planetary romance. Weinbaum’s heavily populated Solar System featured an abundance of intelligent species. Most of them appear odd to human eyes, but when looked at from an evolutionary POV, were reasonable adaptations to their environments (as are we).
Less than a year after his 1934 short story “A Martian Odyssey” appeared on the pages of Wonder Stories, Weinbaum died of lung cancer, leaving a small but memorable body of work. Readers curious about his fiction could do no better than to track down a copy of 1974’s The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum.
Henry Kuttner (April 7, 1915–February 3, 1958)
Kuttner is an odd case, in that while his slick, often comic, solo work was skilled, his best material was written in collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore. Really, one cannot consider the one without the other. Thanks to their writing habits, not to mention their carefree attitude re: bylines, it is difficult, perhaps impossible to sort out who wrote what with one hundred percent accuracy.
Kuttner died of a heart attack in 1958. We live in a golden age of reprints. Readers wishing to sample Kuttner for the first time have a wealth of options. For my money, I’d suggest starting with The Best of Henry Kuttner, then if enticed, plunking the big bucks to buy a used copy of the out-of-print but exemplary Two-Handed Engine.
C.M. Kornbluth (July 2, 1923–March 21, 1958)
Futurian and steadfast bitter misanthrope Cyril Kornbluth got his start young: 1939’s “The Rocket of 1955” appeared when Kornbluth was a teen. It was followed by a flurry of innovative, noteworthy fiction, some penned alone and others—such as Pohl-coauthored The Space Merchants—in collaboration. The quantity and quality of his work are impressive, particularly when one considers how young he was and the World-War-II-shaped hole in Kornbluth’s career.
Kornbluth succumbed to a fatal heart attack, the legacy of his wartime service. As counterintuitive as “a stroke of luck” sounds in the context of an author who died at thirty-four, Kornbluth or rather his legacy had one. Among his supporters and collaborators was noted author, editor, and agent Frederik Pohl. Pohl enjoyed a long career, which kept Pohl-Kornbluth collaborations in print. Kornbluth’s oeuvre appears to have benefited. If you’re curious about his collaborative work, try The Space Merchants. If it’s solo Kornbluth you crave, it is worth the effort to track down His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth. Tell NESFA Press I sent you!
Rosel George Brown (March 15, 1926–November 26, 1967)
Brown followed her September 1958 debut “From an Unseen Censor” with more than two dozen short stores, as well as two novels in the Sibyl Sue Blue series and a collaboration with Keith Laumer (who would later suffer a non-fatal but equally awful medical catastrophe). Her early work was impressive enough to make her a finalist for the 1959 Best New Author Hugo and her co-authored galactic adventure Earthblood was a Nebula finalist.
Nine years after her debut, Brown died of died of lymphoma. Readers curious about authors from Brown’s period are best advised to track down their short story collections, but both A Handful of Time (1963) and Earthblood and Other Stories (2008) with Keith Laumer appear to be out of print. Journey Press to the rescue! Their reprint of Sibyl Sue Blue is available from a variety of book-pushers.
Susan C. Petrey (7 April 1945–5 December 1980)
Petrey’s debut story was 1979’s “Spareen Among the Tartars.” It was the first of a series, focused on mundane vampires living on the Russian steppes, which would dominate her extremely short career. The Petrey stories that I’ve read have been impressive and I have no doubt she would have won numerous awards had she not died just over a year after her debut.
Petrey died from “a fatal error in judgment,” combining medications and alcohol. In the wake of her tragic death, the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund was established; Petrey wanted to but was never able to attend Clarion herself. Unfortunately, Petrey’s sole collection, Gifts of Blood, is out of print but her posthumously Hugo-nominated “Spidersong” is available online here. I encourage you to read it.
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As stated above, “Authors who died too young” is an unfortunately large category, and five is only the very tip-top of a Brobdingnagian iceberg. Feel free to commemorate others in the comments below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.
