Brian Stableford (1948-2024)

More sad news to report: the hugely prolific Brian Stableford died on 24 February 2024 aged 75. His early reputation for fast-moving, popular Space Operas such as the 1970s Grainger/Hooded Swan and Daedalus Mission series may have overshadowed his more considerable later work under multiple headings. As an aficionado of Scientific Romance he wrote several substantial novels in that mode, including The Empire of Fear (1988) with its rationalist underpinning for the Vampire legend, and the philosophically challenging trilogy The Werewolves of London (1990), The Angel of Pain (1991) and The Carnival of Destruction (1994). As a major critic he wrote illuminatingly about the subgenre in The Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950 (1985), which won an Eaton Award and was later much expanded into the four-volume The New Atlantis (2016). As a workaholic translator he made a great many French scientific romances, Proto SF works and related Fantastika available for the first time in English. And there was much, much more.

In 1999 he received the Pilgrim Award for distinguished contributions to the study of sf. Besides his enormous personal output, Brian was a key contributing editor of the first and second editions of the SF Encyclopedia, and a valued long-time friend of the current principal editors.

• Charity fundraiser in memory of Brian Stableford (set up by his children)
• Black Gate
• BSFA
• Locus
• Memorial reviews by Rich Horton
• Reactor