Death: Thomas M. Disch (science fiction writer)

Locus ^ | July 6, 2008

[EveningStar]

SF author, critic, and poet Thomas M. Disch, born 1940, died July 4, 2008, of suicide in his New York City apartment. Ellen Datlow reports that Disch had been depressed for several years, especially by the death of long-time partner Charles Naylor, and worries of eviction from his rent-controlled apartment. Biographical details shortly.

[EveningStar]

Wikipedia article with many links

[null and void]

Damm.

I will dream of electric sheep tonight in his honor.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

I will dream of electric sheep tonight in his honor.

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was written by Philip K. Dick, who died in 1985.

[null and void]

*nevermind*

Camp Concentration was great

[null and void]

I expect I’ll be hearing more about this...

[B-Chan]

Disch was an exceptionally talented writer. Unfortunately, he was a man without hope, without which no man can survive. He was not a man who mad much use for the future; his first novel, 1965's The Genocides, is a bleak tale in which the entire human race is wiped out by aliens; his (arguable) magnum opus, 334 (1972), is a detailed examination of the grim, banal, and ultimately futile lives of the inhabitants of the titular New York City address in a future world where the Great Society envisioned by the technocratic macro-planners of the late 1960s/early 1970s has become a reality. Anyone who has ever wondered what America would have been like if the fondest dreams of well-intentioned '60s liberals had come true need only consult 334, which depicts in grimy detail a nation of hedonistic underachievers, living cheek-by-jowl in huge, crumbling urban housing blocks, tranquilized by mindless TV and legal drugs and insulated from risk by the benevolence of MODICUM, the federal government's all-encompassing welfare apparatus. Imagine a world run by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare — that's 334

Nor was he one for the techno-utopias common to the science fiction of the 1950s and early '60s. As did most of his New Wave contemporaries, Disch considered the traditional American SF idea of the Hopeful Future both dishonest and immoral; like them, his goal was to give it to the reader "straight" — i.e, to attempt to give readers a look into an "honest" (i.e. essentially hopeless) future, without flinching and without pretending. As a group, the New Wavers did not have much use for mankind. As did the Existentialists that predated them, the writers of SF's New Wave ultimately held that Man was the problem, not the solution, and that only a future without Man could honestly be called "hopeful". Disch and his New Wave contemporaries employed the world-destroying tropes of SF to realize the maxim l'enfer, c'est les autres in a fashion of which Sartre and the Existentialitsts of the past could only have dreamed, and to which the Earth-Firsters and Human Extinctionists of our day can only aspire.

Despite his disdain for the Wonderful World of Tomorrow, however, Disch brought a rare gift to readers of science fiction: quality. Amid the dull dross that inhabits the dubious treasure box of commercial English-language fiction, Disch's works are gems of rare sparkle: his prose is carefully polished, and certain of his characters have an almost Dostoyevskyan depth and luster. Ultimately, however, his works' shining qualities are subdued by the flaw of gray, depressing nihilism at their core.

It may be that in the end that nihilism rose up and consumed him. (Ordinarily, I'd trot out Nietszche's well-worn quote regarding the Abyss here, but the man is dead, and it's too late at night for that literary crap.) Suffice it to say therefore that Thomas Disch was a talented writer, an influential critic, and a suffering human being. Despite his suicide, I pray that in his final moments he managed to open his heart to the Man that saves all men, and that he has somehow found the hope that eluded him in the Hands of a merciful God.

[Soliton]

Read SF for 40 years and thought I never heard of him yntil I saw the Brave Little Toaster. It ain’t science fiction without the science. Just because a story is set in the future doesn’t make it science fiction either.

His definition of Sci-fi as a branch of children’s literature confuses it with Fantasy. Science Fiction is simply fiction based on science.

[Leisler]

Catholic hating, own father hating, gay, military recruit psycho dropout, New Yorker, wrote for The Nation, now alone(who's fault is that?) after death of partner, commits suicide.

[squarebarb]

Thanks B-Chan. I remember this writer, especially 334. I remember reading it with fascination and hating it at the same time.

too bad, too bad.

[heartwood]

Brave Little Toaster.

Reminds me of James Tiptree, Jr who was writing at the same time- committed suicide with her husband.