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.
Though some of his books, notably 334, derive from Disch's experience as a gay man, he was rarely touted as a "gay writer." "I was pleased when a book called The Gay Canon included 'On Wings of Song'; I thought, Well, finally! They seem to notice me," Disch told Strange Horizons' David Horwich in 2001.
A LiveJournal posting 10 days before Disch's death illustrates his wry humor as well as his pain:
"Once a mortal, soon to be in Heaven, I may be
your best chance to distinguish yourself
as someone specially Blessed and bound for Glory
without going to a lot of trouble or expense ...
Start with a little Tom My God shrine beside the BBQ
and before you can say Glory Be the whole back yard
and all its gardening tools are tax-deductible!
If your tax returns are challenged, show this poem
to the judge and ask him how many believers
constitute a Faith ..."
(The Advocate)
