Ellen Datlow has posted the first I’ve heard of it on her livejournal. This is very sad. Disch’s books and stories are remarkable and have been a big influence on me since I was a teenager, plowing through White Fang Goes Dingo. 334 is one of the great works of American sf, although others might pick Camp Concentration or another of his books for that honor. He has always been a writer whose work I looked up to. I only met him once, at a Norwescon in 1982, and my memories are mainly of him looming through crowded convention suites. He had arrived to announce the creation of the Philip K. Dick award, and summed up PKD’s passing with these words (which I believe he cribbed from Dick): “Fucking Death.”
Indeed.
Some months back, I pointed people toward Disch’s own livejournal, where he was turning out poetry at an astonishing rate. It’s all still there, and more besides.
And here is a recent podcast, along with a more recent photograph of Disch. I remember him looking like the fellow in the photo I posted above, so I’ll leave that where it is. Today I was in a bookstore buying a used SF Book Club edition of Triplicities. The cashier said, “That’s a great collection. He’s a wonderful writer.” I said, “He just died. Did you know that?” And then the most quickly stifled, embarrassed, conversation-ending sort of “Yeah” I’ve ever heard in conversation. Neither of us knew what to say. I took my book and left.
Yeah, this hit me pretty hard. On Wings of Song was a seminal work in my upbringing as a writer and oddly enough helped me get through high school. 334 will also always be a standout, as will his critical works and his recent poetry, which like others I had been following and sometimes commenting on (LJ username is sunpony). I urge folks to go there and read his work; some of it is just amazing.
His departure is a great loss; with the new books coming out I was hoping to read a lot more of his work in the years to come, and to perhaps meet him.
Yeah, it’s amazing how many of the bits and pieces that jostle around in my mind stem either directly or indirectly from Disch–the criticism as well as the fiction. As well as the critical work about him, such as Samuel R. Delany’s “The American Shore.” Disch’s work was a place where a lot of what was best about modern sf converged.