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.

Author and editor David Kopaska-Merkel, 69, died August 26, 2026.

David C. Kopaska-Merkel was born January 11, 1957 in Charlottesville VA. He attended William & Mary, earned a doctorate in geology, worked for the Geological Survey of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and wrote several articles and books on geology and paleontology. He began writing speculative work in short fiction, starting with his first published story “Mecroniya” (1981), but soon began publishing poetry, beginning with “on the river” (1984) under the name Lawrence Harding and accumulating well over 1,000 published poems. He served as the president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association from 2011 to 2014. In 2017, he was voted a SFPA Grand Master, and in 2025, the association awarded him the President’s Lifetime Service Award. He lived in Birmingham AL.

Several of his works have been recognized with awards, including Rhysling Award winner “The Tin Men” (2005); Rhysling Award nominees “Valley of Years” (2000), “Medusa’s Tale” (2002), “meteor shower” (2002), “Tsunami Child” (2005), and “Rattlebox III” (2009); and Dwarf Stars Award nominee “If She Knew She Was a Ghost” (2017). He was published in Abyss & Apex, Dreams & Nightmares, Eldritch Tales, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Scifaikuest Online, Space & Time, Star*Line, Strange Horizons, and many more. His over 30 collections include underfoot (1991), Elgin Award nominee Edible Zoo (1994), Y2K Survival Kit (1999), The Ruined City (2003), I don’t know what you’re having (2005), Drowning Atlantis (2007), Hasp Deadbolt, Private Eye (2007), Brushfires (2010), The Tin Men (2011) with Kendall Evans, Elgin Award nominee SETI Hits Paydirt (2014), Gods and Monsters (2015), The Ambassador Takes One for the Team (2019), Unwelcome Guests (2024), and Risk Assessment(2025). Some Disassembly Required (2022) won an Elgin Award.

Kopaska-Merkel was also a storied editor. Among his projects, he edited Dreams & Nightmares spanning more than 100 issues over approximately 40 years, beginning in 1986, making the magazine one of the oldest recognized speculative poetry magazines. He edited Star*Line from 1996 to 2002 and a 2020 guest issue of Eye to the Telescope. He edited nine issues of the Rhysling Poetry Awards Anthology, and the 2023 issue of the Dwarf Stars Poetry Award Anthology with Miguel O. Mitchell. He contributed numerous works of non-fiction, primarily to Star*Line, but also to Dreams & Nightmares, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Mindsparks, Scifaikuest, and Xenophilia.

He is survived by his wife, Sheila, and their daughters.

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Fan and organizer Robin Johnson, 89, died July 6, 2026 in Ballarat, Australia of underlying causes after a fall.

Johnson was born March 9, 1937 and lived variously in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, and Ballarat, as well as in England. He chaired the first Australian Worldcon in 1975 as well as Thylacons 1-3. He was awarded the Ditmar Awards Spe­cial Award in 1974 and in 1983, and he received the Big Heart Award at Worldcon in 2007.

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SF/F fan and bookseller Dave Nee, 73, died August 6, 2026 of an apparent heart attack.

David Chin-Kuo Nee was born in 1953. He attended high school in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1974, he co-founded The Portable Bookstore with Debbie Notkin and Tom Whitmore as a service running books to local organizations. It would be renamed The Other Change of Hobbit and became a physical store in Berkeley at the suggestion of Sherry Gottlieb, founder of the eponymous bookstore A Change of Hobbit. The physical store relocated multiple times over the decades, finding homes in downtown Berkeley and El Cerrito, before closing in 2014.

Besides bookselling, Nee wrote bibliographies for Thomas M. Disch and Michael Bishop in 1982 and 1983. He also had a long-time involvement with San Francisco Pride, being chair of the SF Pride Safety Committee.

He is survived by his husband, David Scott Marley.

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John Crowley, 83, died August 8, 2026.

John William Crowley was born December 1, 1942 in Presque Isle ME, where his father, a doctor and captain in the Army Air Corps, was stationed. The family moved several times until settling in Indiana in 1953. He earned an English degree from Indiana University in 1964 and moved to New York City and worked in photography and documentary film writing. Crowley became a freelance writer in 1966, married his wife Laurie Block in 1984 and had twin daughters, and began teaching fiction at Yale University in 1993.

Crowley’s first novel, SF The Deep, was published in 1975. He soon published Beasts (1976), Engine Summer (1979), and Little, Big (1981), his first published work of fantasy and perhaps his best-known work, once called “a neglected masterpiece” by critic Harold Bloom. The novel won a World Fantasy Award and a Mythopoeic Award and was a finalist for a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, a BSFA Award, and a Seiun Award. He went on to write the highly ambitious Ægypt series, beginning with Ægypt (1987) and followed by Love & Sleep (1994), Dæmonomania (2000), and Endless Things (2007); and he wrote other standalones including The Translator (2002), historical novels Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land (2005) and Four Freedoms (2009), Mythopoeic Award and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire winner and Locus and World Fantasy Award finalist Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr (2017), and Flint and Mirror (2022).

Crowley’s shorter fiction is also celebrated, most notably “Great Work of Time” (1991), a World Fantasy Award winner and Nebula Award finalist for Novella. He wrote Hugo and Nebula Award nominee “Snow” (1985) and Locus Award winner and Hugo and Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist “Gone” (1996). His short fiction has been published in F&SF, Omni Best Science Fiction, Interzone, and Asimov’s, and collected in World Fantasy Award-winner Novelty (1989), Antiquities (1993), Novelties & Souvenirs (2004), Totalitopia (2017), and And Go Like This: Stories (2019). Some of his non-fiction was gathered as In Other Words (2007) and Reading Backwards (2019). His work was the subject of critical study Snake’s-Hands: The Fiction of John Crowley, Michael Andre-Driussi & Alice K. Turner, eds. (2003).

Crowley’s numerous awards include an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (1992) and a World Fantasy Life Achievement Award (2006).

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

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Fan and organizer Robin Johnson, 89, died July 6, 2026 in Ballarat, Australia of underlying causes after a fall.

Johnson was born March 9, 1937 and lived variously in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, and Ballarat, as well as in England. He chaired the first Australian Worldcon in 1975 as well as Thylacons 1-3. He was awarded the Ditmar Awards Special Award in 1974 and in 1983, and he received the Big Heart Award at Worldcon in 2007.

Russell Kirkpatrick, 65, died June 26, 2026 in Canberra Hospital. He was diagnosed with aggressive melanoma.

Kirkpatrick was born April 11, 1961 in Christchurch, New Zealand. He received a PhD in geography from the University of Canterbury and was at separate times a lecturer at the University of Waikato and the University of Canberra. He wrote the Fire of Heaven series and the Husk series, the latter known as Broken Man in the US and UK. Fire of Heaven is Across the Face of the World (2004), In the Earth Abides the Flame (2004), and The Right Hand of God (2005). The Broken Man series is Path of Revenge (2007), Dark Heart (2008), and Beyond the Wall of Time (2008). All three Broken Man books won Sir Julius Vogel Awards. He also wrote Silent Sorrow (2021), the first and only title in the Book of Remezov series.

Titan US publicity director Katharine T. Carroll, 68, died June 28, 2026. The cause was attributed to aortic dissection.

Carroll was born Katharine Trowbridge in January 1958. She attended Manhattan Country School, Riverdale Country School, and Boston University and lived in New York City and Maine. She began work as a publicist in 1980 with Time Inc., formed her own publicity consulting company in 1990, then joined Titan Publishing Group’s US branch as a publicist in 2008. She went on to work for Titan for 18 years. She is survived by her three children and mother.

Author Dafydd ab Hugh, 65, died in June 2026.

Ab Hugh was born David M. Friedman on October 22, 1960 in Los Angeles CA. He began writing SF/F as early as 1987 with Heroing: or, How He Wound Down the World, first of two books in the fantasy series Jiana. He wrote Arthuriana books Arthur War Lord (1994) and Far Beyond the Wave (1994), as well as several tie-in novels for Star Trek and Doom. His short fiction, including Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated novelette “The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, a Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk” (1990), was published in Asimov’s, New Destinies, Free Space (1997), and more.

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

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Author R.S. Belcher, 59, died July 11, 2026.

Rod Belcher was born May 2, 1967 in Roanoke VA. He graduated Virginia Commonwealth University, worked on a Masters degree in forensic science at The George Washington University, and worked as a newspaper and magazine editor, a reporter, and a freelance writer. After story “Orphans” appeared in a Star Trek tie-in anthology in 2006, he continued publishing in 2013 with “Hollow Moments” and The Six-Gun Tarot, first in the Golgotha series, which continued with The Shotgun Arcana (2014), The Queen of Swords (2017), and The Ghost Dance Judgment (2020). He also wrote the Nightwise Universe, including Nightwise (2015), The Night Dahlia (2018), Locus Award nominee for Horror The Brotherhood of the Wheel (2016), and King of the Road (2018). In 2019, he published another tie-in novel, Men in Black International (2019). Standalone novel The Queen’s Road was published in 2020. He published about a dozen short fiction works in the 2010s and ‘20s in anthologies such as Galactic Stew (2020) and Skull X Bones (2025) and in magazines such as Amazing Stories.

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Author and editor Mark J. McGarry, 68, died in May 2026 in Paris, France.

McGarry was born February 6, 1958 in Albany NY. He wrote Sun Dogs (1981) and Blank Slate (1984) as well as several genre works of short fiction published in magazines including Asimov’s, Analog, Stellar, Amazing Stories, and F&SF, including Nebula Award nominee “The Mercy Gate” (1998). He was the original editor of SF magazine Empire and a past editor of the SFWA Forum and Bulletin.

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