Dibs

One of the most prolific sci-fi/horror authors of all time died of cardiopulmonary disease last Friday. Charles Grant, who was born in 1942 and won two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards, had taught public school and served in Vietnam before becoming a full-time writer in 1975. Since then, the New Jersey resident wrote no fewer than seventy novels. Several dozen were published under his real name; the rest were published under pseudonyms including “Simon Lake,” “Felicia Andrews” and “Deborah Lewis.” The books include The Fangs of the Hooded Demon (Tor, 1988) The Seven Spears of the W’dch’ck (Tor, 1988), The Really Ugly Thing From Mars (Ace, 1990), The Reasonably Invisible Man (Ace, 1991), Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire (Ace, 1992), The Hour of the Oxrun Dead (Doubleday, 1978) and A Quiet Night of Fear (Berkley, 1981). His widow, fellow horror author Kathryn Ptacek, writes of Grant’s death — “we had pizza and we were watching the Mets game” — at the above-linked site.