The High One turned to flame in his hands, and then into a memory

[sovay]

Patricia A. McKillip has died. I read her so early, I can't remember the first time. Her influence on my writing and on some of my thought is incalculable. We met twice at different conventions. I shared readings with her husband. She wrote the sea like I could breathe it. I was re-reading one of my favorites of her mid-career novels idly last week, hoping that whatever she wrote next would be something I liked. At the moment the stones are still falling out of the sky.

Comments

[julian]

...Damn.

I didn't feel like she was *done* yet, unlike Le Guin. I wanted more.

I'm glad for what she shared with us, though. Very glad.

[muccamukk]

Oh wow. I wasn't expecting that. It's hard to imagine fantasy without her.

[asakiyume]

Just saw this on Twitter :(

[sovay]

I wanted more.

I was expecting more. If anything had happened to her health in recent years, I hadn't heard about it. I figured there would be a new novel presently. Kingfisher (2016) had differed so strongly from her long run of secondary worlds, I was really curious what the next thing would be.

I'm glad for what she shared with us, though. Very glad.

It's not just that I would be different. The field would. She had just blurbed a novel by a friend of mine! Damn.

[sovay]

Oh wow. I wasn't expecting that. It's hard to imagine fantasy without her.

Once Beagle got into his eighties, I started to brace to lose him, but I thought McKillip was just there. I thought I might run into her at another convention, assuming I ever attended one in person again. It makes it feel especially unfair.

[sovay]

Just saw this on Twitter

It's a shock.

[princessofgeeks]

I am so sorry. Wishing you all peace.

[sartorias]

Met her once. What a sweet, lovely person! I hate that we don't have any more from her. But at least we've got what we do have.

[grammarwoman]

What sad news! The Riddle-Master series is on my list of regular re-reads; she shall be missed. :(

[minoanmiss]

Aw dammit.

*raises a light to her memory*

[thistleingrey]

Ah, damn.

[nineweaving]

Oh no. The sweetest, shyest visionary I have ever met. She had worlds yet to write.

Nine

[teenybuffalo]

I'm so sorry.

[sara]

She wrote some of my favorite books. And was born the same year as both my parents, so it feels far too soon for her to be gone.

[starlady]

She wrote so many good books, and so many of them standalones. I need to do some rereads, deeply sad that they are now memorial rereads.

[sovay]

I am so sorry. Wishing you all peace.

Thank you. She was not someone who felt old enough to lose.

[sovay]

Met her once. What a sweet, lovely person! I hate that we don't have any more from her. But at least we've got what we do have.

It is true that the work is not nothing. I just miss when the person behind it goes out.

[sovay]

What sad news! The Riddle-Master series is on my list of regular re-reads; she shall be missed.

As far as I can tell, those books were my introduction to her. Pieces of them are just embedded in my head. I thought of like three different lines when I heard the news. By definition, you can't tell someone that sort of thing when they're alive.

[sovay]

*raises a light to her memory*

*hugs*

[sovay]

Ah, damn.

That.

[sovay]

I'm so sorry.

*hugs*

[sovay]

Oh no. The sweetest, shyest visionary I have ever met. She had worlds yet to write.

I didn't love all of them, but the ones I did love, I can't imagine being without.

*hugs*

[sovay]

She wrote some of my favorite books. And was born the same year as both my parents, so it feels far too soon for her to be gone.

She was not older than both of my parents. It is part of my shock. The rest is the loss. At least she was not like Lloyd Alexander, who I never had the chance to tell was so important to me, but still.

[sovay]

She wrote so many good books, and so many of them standalones. I need to do some rereads, deeply sad that they are now memorial rereads.

Yes. I wasn't ready for them to be.

[pameladean]

I am so sad. Nobody wrote exactly as she did. Her humor was so sly. I once, at the first World Fantasy Convention I ever attended, watched her wind up Stephen R. Donaldson by demurely contradicting his (all very sensible, to my surprise) every remark about the process of writing. They got into an extremely convoluted sidetrack, using traffic lights as a metaphor, that I am sure she knew exactly how to get out of.

It took me a very long time to realize that she was winding him up. I was quite wound up myself at how a writer I admired so much could have such starkly barking daft ideas of the process, while the writer whose work I didn't like had such sensible ones.

Stephen Donaldson twigged to what was going on long before I did and at some point, I think, was uttering the most anodyne remarks he could produce just to see what she would do with them. But he was really wound up for a while.

P.

P.