Robert Holdstock (1948 - 2009)

This Winter continues to pry my fingers loose from all sense of reality. At the weekend, 29th November, Robert Holdstock died after collapsing on the 18th with what proved to be a serious E.coli infection . He was only 61. I knew Rob when I was active in the world of SF conventions and fandom. I didn't know him especially well socially, but he stands tall in my mind as a fun-loving man who filled every room he was in with laughter and good cheer. As is always the way of these things, I'd recently obtained his email address with the intention of writing to him to catch up and say how much his writing meant to me. I delayed doing so and regret that I can never do it now.

Those of you interested in the SF and fantasy field will know him as the author of many notable sf, fantasy and horror novels, but his talent was to show that genre writing could also be good literature.. Unquestionably, his most significant work is that connected with the Mythago cycle, which began with Mythago Wood (1984). The novel won both the World Fantasy Award and the BSFA Award and was particularly notable for creating a viable fantasy mythos set in the present day, while describing an ancient world of archetypes within an English woodland.

My sincerest sympathy to his partner Sarah and the rest of his family.