Ian Watson, 1945 - 2026

I belatedly see from the most recent Ansible that Ian Watson passed on 13th April.

My most recent memory of him was his coming up to us at a Novacon quite a few years ago and asking "Is this your first convention?", and then wondering why we fell about laughing (we'd both been active in fandom for some twenty or more years at that stage).

Not having read his work (or at least, not recognising his name), I peeked at his LT works page and note he contributed to a lot of collections. Makes me wonder how many writers are unfamiliar to me simply because I don't do a good job at (1) regularly reading such publications, and (b) recalling the titles and authors of those few I do read.

Ian Watson’s The Embedding has been on my TBR list for some time. I think I’ll finally pull it off the shelf this spring.

>2 elenchus: The LT author page rather hides his light under a bushel, given that it lists some 379 works, only twenty of which were novels. Ian gave up writing in the 1990s to care for his ill wife; after her death in 2000, he returned to writing, mainly short stories.

Guardian obit (by Lisa Tuttle) here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/15/ian-watson-obituary

>3 Neil_Luvs_Books: That does sound enticing, adding to my recon list and of course look forward to your review once you've read it.