Author Neal Barrett, Jr., died 12 January 2014. Born in San Antonio, Texas, on 3 November 1929, he was the Toastmaster at the 1997 WorldCon in San Antonio, and SFWA’s 2010 Author Emeritus.

His first published story was “To Tell the Truth,” which appeared in Galaxy in 1960, and his first novel, Kelwin, came out ten years later. He wrote a lot of fiction under his own name, but also used several pseudonyms and house names. In addition to his speculative fiction, he also wrote mysteries, comics, media tie-in novels, and some Tom Swift and Hardy Boys novels. His most recent story may be “Bloaters,” which appeared in the 2013 anthology Impossible Monsters, while his most recent collection, Other Seasons: The Best of Neal Barrett, Jr., appeared in 2012 from Subterranean Press. For more, see his bibliography on the ISFDb.

Barrett’s long and storied career (see his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry for a discussion of his themes and impact) resulted in surprisingly few award nominations. His only Hugo and Nebula nominations were for “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” (a novelette published in the February 1988 issue of Asimov’s). He earned a Theodore Sturgeon Award nomination the same year, for “Stairs” (Asimov’s, September 1988), and a World Fantasy Award nomination for his 2000 collection Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories.

There is a fairly large, unofficial Barrett site maintained by a fan at http://www.nealbarrettjr.com/.