On Tuesday, March 18, 2014, the American writer Lucius Shepard (photo ©Harmonia Amanda) passed away. He was appreciated in the world of science fiction, horror, and fantasy and occasionally he wrote stories of other genres.
Lucius Shepard Taylor was born on August 21, 1943, in Lynchburg, Virginia, USA, although many sources report 1947 as the year of his birth. His father wanted him to become a writer and had him read a lot of history and classical literature but for years he published only some poetry. After attending for a short period the North Carolina University he moved to New York and then started traveling around the world, mainly in Europe, doing various jobs, not always legal.
Back in the USA, he got married. After working as a musician, in the early ’80s Lucius Shepard was spending a period in which he was unemployed when his wife read an article about a group of science fiction writers. Almost by accident, he started writing a story that was published.
After publishing short fiction, Lucius Shepard expanded one of his stories obtaining his first novel, “Green Eyes”, a revisitation of the theme of zombies with a science fiction connotation, which was published in 1984. With this novel Shepard won the John W. Campbell Award as the Best new writer.
Among the settings Lucius Shepard preferred there was Central America, an area where he lived for a period and he found suitable for stories of various genres. There he set a near future war in some science fiction stories. His 1986 novella “R & R” won the Nebula Award and was further developed in his 1987 novel “Life During Wartime”, which won the German Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis.
During the ’90s, Lucius Shepard wrote little literature but still managed to win a Hugo Award and a Locus for his 1992 novella “Barnacle Bill the Spacer” and a locus in the horror category for his 1993 novel “The Golden”.
Lucius Shepard also wrote film reviews for “The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction” and the site electricstory.com. In the past decade, however, he got back to writing literature on a regular basis. He won the Locus Award for his 2000 novella “Radiant Green Star” and the International Horror Guild Award for the novels “Louisiana Breakdown” (2003), “Viator” (2004), and “Softspoken” (2007). His 2007 novella “Vacancy” won the Shirley Jackson Award, an award given for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and dark fantasy.
Last year, Lucius Shepard had various health problems from which he was recovering but a heart attack killed him. It’s one of the cases in which biographical and bibliographical data really say little of a person who lived a life often adventurous and a really special writer. On his debut, he was considered part of the cyberpunk movement but it was soon clear that his style and the themes he wrote about went far beyond a single sub-genre, so much so that his works embraced various genres.
