This time for Kage Baker, who won't get nearly the amount of ink of other writers who've passed away recently, and whose work I love more dearly than any of theirs. I first read her in 2004, it turns up through a little googling, and immediately became a devotee. It does not feel just that there won't be anything more, after her next book publishes in March. I can only hope her books continue to find the new readers they deserve, and she lives on in that way.
Her work will always be the best kind of alive for me. I expect I'll go back and reread the Company books sometime soon. I just ordered The Hotel Under the Sand, her only novel for children, from last summer, which I managed to not read yet somehow.
I feel this frustratingly inexpressible sadness–for those who knew her, because she must have been amazing and I'm sure she will leave a large hole in their lives, and for all the books and stories we will not get now that she might have written, and for the fact she was not more feted while she was here.
Discover her work, if you haven't.
So sad. I read most of the Company novels and short stories through the years. I think they were one of the most important achievements in the sf field over the past 15 or so years (I don’t recall when those stories began running. She was a writer of great vision and she’ll be missed.
So very very sad. She and her work will be missed.
(FWIW, Hotel Under the Sand is probably my favorite Kage Baker book, but I am at a loss to explain why.)