It’s not all good news, though.  A week or so after the Con, I discovered the sad news that Douglas Hill had died in a road accident.



A Canadian who settled in Britain, Hill was the Literary Editor of Tribune for many years, but was also a prolific writer of young adult fiction.  He wrote the Last Legionary quintet- a series of YA science fiction novels based around the character of Keill Randor: Galactic Warlord, Deathwing Over Veynaa, Day Of The Starwind, Planet Of The Warlord, and the prequel, Young Legionary.  He also wrote the ColSec trilogy.  I re-read the Randor novels last year, when laid up with a touch of the dreaded lurgi, and they hold up well.  They’re written with intelligence and economy, by someone, most of all, who knew how to tell a good story.



But there was more to Hill than that.  There was a humanity in his writing that always shone through.  Keill was a Legionary of Moros- a warrior, but not one who gloried in carnage, and despised oppressors.  A stark contrast to the gung-ho arseholes who are held up as examples today.  His enemy, the Warlord- a monstrous, secretive tyrant who sought to foment warfare until the Galaxy lay in ruins, thus to establish himself as ruler- might have been George Bush in space, except that when we finally met him, he could string a sentence together.



Childhood’s over when you know you’re going to die.  My childhood ended long ago, but the things that were part of your childhood can outlast it.  Hill’s novels are a case in point.  They can still be found and read, at least.  But another good writer’s gone.



I never knew the man, but I admired his work.  So raise your glasses, please, ladies and gentlemen, to the memory of Douglas Hill, and observe, in your own time, a moment of silence.



Douglas Hill- R.I.P.