Sad news. :-(
Sci-fi Writer Thomas Disch Commits Suicide
Science fiction writer and poet Thomas Disch has committed suicide. Disch died July 4 and his body was discovered July 5, according to the New York City Police Department. He was 68.
The author of popular sci-fi novels Camp Concentration and 334, Disch had been openly gay since 1968. Following the 2004 death of his partner, poet Charles Naylor, Disch reportedly began suffering from depression.
Awarded many honors for his fiction, including two O. Henry awards, the genre-bending Disch also published more than a half dozen books of poetry, a whimsical Child's Garden of Grammar (1997); a history of speculative fiction, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (1998); and the Brave Little Toaster series for children.
Born in Des Moines in 1940, Disch moved to New York City to study architecture at New York University. A writing class in his junior year intrigued him into trying pulp fiction; he sold an early effort to Fantastic Stories for $112.50, according to the Minnesota Historical Society, and was hooked.
Holding a series of classic authorial grunt jobs, including Metropolitan Opera supernumerary and graveyard-shift newsman, Disch eventually became part of science fiction's new wave, which took advantage of the 1960s' freedom to take on relevant topics in adult language and thereby gain cultural weight.
http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid57207.asp