Gav - RIP Douglas Hill (1935 - 2007)

Douglas Hill, author of the Last Legionary series (among others) was struck and killed by a car on June 21st.

Bugger.

The works of Douglas Hill - primarily the above-mentioned Last Legionary series, but also the Huntsman and Colsec series - were probably my favourite SF before I graduated onto the adult stuff. They may not have scaled the heights of literary achievement, but I loved 'em when I was 9/10/11. He was one of a small band of childrens' SF writers who introduced me to the idea that I might be able to get some of my spaceships-and-rayguns-and-aliens-and-other-strange-things quota from books, as well as TV and film.

Without that shove to cross the media boundaries, and given the (lack of) quantity/quality of much kiddie-friendly early-mid 1980s TV/Film SF, it's not too much of a stretch to a parallel world where my interest in the genre died in 1983 and I never met most of you lot, including calatrice.

I was fortunate enough to meet him at Eboracon (Unicon 2001, organised by psycho_machia and others, IIRC) and he was a very normal, friendly guy, who seemed to mostly be interested in writing stuff that got kids reading, and literary fame could go hang. Worked on me.

(via james_nicoll)