Editor, critic, and publisher Malcolm Edwards, 76, died October 3, 2026. He had Parkinson’s disease.

Malcolm John Edwards was born December 3, 1949 in London, England. He received a degree from the University of Cambridge. He worked at several publishing houses, including Gollancz from 1976-89, HarperCollins from 1991-7, and Orion Books from 1998-2019, first as managing director, then as deputy CEO and group publisher. For Gollancz, he edited the SF Masterworks series, re-releasing SF novels from notable genre authors including Joe Haldeman, Samuel R. Delany, and Ursula K. Le Guin. He later co-edited the companion series, Fantasy Masterworks, with Jo Fletcher. After this, he undertook the SF Gateway project, an ebook library noted as the largest digital SF/F library of its kind at the time, which launched in 2011 alongside the third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Edwards was active in the UK SF fandom space throughout the 1970s and ’80s, and soon he was working as a critic and magazine editor. He edited for Vector in 1972-4, penning several editorials and reviews. He was the administrator of the Science Fiction Foundation for three years and edited its journal, Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction, in 1975-80. He was a founding board member of Interzone, which he edited in 1982-3. He also wrote one novel around this time, Succubus (1985) with Robert Holdstock under the name John Stock, and one work of short fiction, BSFA Award winner “After-Images” (1983).

He wrote several works of non-fiction, in frequent collaboration with other authors. He wrote Spacecraft in Fact and Fiction (1979) with Harry Harrison; The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists (1983) with Maxim Jakubowski; and Alien Landscapes (1979), Magician: The Lost Journals of the Magus Geoffrey Carlyle (1982), and Lost Realms (1984) with Robert Holdstock; among others. He edited anthologies Constellations: Stories of the Future (1980), The Gollancz / Sunday Times SF Competition Stories (1987), and A Is for Brian (1990), the latter with Margaret Aldiss and Frank Hatherley. As a fiction editor, he worked with numerous authors, including J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, William Gibson, Terry Pratchett, and more. In 1996, as part of HarperCollins, he won the British Book Award for Imprint & Editor of the Year.

For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.