Obituaries have started to appear following the sad news that Tom Disch took his own life on July 4th. Since they carry plenty of biographical information, I'll limit myself to the following checklist of his work.
Obituaries:
Entertainment Weekly (7 July);
Los Angeles Times (8 July);
New York Times (8 July);
Daily Telegraph (9 July);
The Guardian +
additional letter (9 July);
Washington Post (9 July);
The Independent (10 July);
Salon remembrance by Elizabeth Hand (11 July);
LA Times remembrance by James Sallis (13 July);
The Times (17 July);
Tachyon Press (an updated list of obituaries and tributes).
Further Information:
Tom Disch's Live Journal;
Wikipedia.
Interviews:
NPR (interview from 1988 + excerpt from
The Word of God);
The Bat Segundo Show (interview conducted 25 June 2008).
Books:
Amazon.
"To me what is most poignant about transcendent experience is that it's fleeting. It always has been. That, to me, is like an essential pathos in human existence. And I wouldn't want to let go of my sense of its poignancy."—Tom Disch, 1975.
NovelsThe Genocides. New York, Berkley Medallion, 1965; London, Whiting & Wheaton, 1967.
Mankind Under the Leash. New York, Ace Books, 1966; as
The Puppies of Terra, London, Panther, 1978; New York, Pocket Books, 1980.
The House That Fear Built (as Cassandra Knye [with John T. Sladek]). New York, Paperback Library, 1966.
Echo Round His Bones. New York, Berkley Medallion, 1967; London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1969.
Camp Concentration. London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968; Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Co., 1969.
Black Alice (as Thom Demijohn [with John T. Sladek]). Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Co., 1968; as by Thomas M. Disch & John Sladek, London, W. H. Allen, 1969; New York, Carroll & Graf, 1989.
The Prisoner (based on the TV series). New York, Ace Books, 1969; London, Dobson, 1979; as
The Prisoner: I Am Not a Number, London, Boxtree, 1992.
Alfred the Great (novelisation of the film; as Victor Hastings). 1969.
334. London, McGibbon & Kee, 1972; New York, Avon, 1974.
Clara Reeve (as Leonie Hargrave). New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.
On Wings of Song. London, Victor Gollancz, 1979; New York, St. Martin's Press, 1979.
Neighboring Lives, with Charles Naylor. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981.
The Businessman. A tale of terror. New York, Harper & Row, 1984; London, Cape, 1984.
The Brave Little Toaster. A bedtime story for small appliances. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Co., 1986; London, Grafton, 1986.
The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Co., 1988.
The MD. A horror story. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991; London, HarperCollins, 1992.
The Priest. A gothic romance. London, Millennium, 1994; New York, Knopf, 1995.
The Sub. A study in witchcraft. New York, Knopf, 1999.
The Voyage of the Proteus: An Eyewitness Account of the End of the World. Subterranean Press, Jan 2008.
OmnibusTriplicity (contains:
Echo Round His Bones,
The Genocides,
The Puppies of Terra). Garden City, N.Y., Nelson Doubleday, 1980.
CollectionsOne Hundred and Two H Bombs, and other science fiction stories. London, Compact Books, 1966; as
One Hundred and Two H-Bombs, New York, Berkley Medallion, 1971.
White Fang Goes Dingo, and other funny sf stories. London, Arrow, 1971.
Under Compulsion. London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968; as
Fun With Your New Head, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Co., 1971.
Getting Into Death: The Best Short Stories of Thomas M. Disch. London, Hart-Davis McGibbon, 1973.
Getting Into Death, and other stories. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
The Early Science Fiction Stories of Thomas M. Disch, ed. David G. Hartwell. Boston, MS, Gregg Press, 1977.
Fundamental Disch. New York, Bantam Books, 1980; abridged, London, Victor Gollancz, 1981.
The Man Who Had No Idea. London, Victor Gollancz, 1982; New York, Bantam, 1982.
Ringtime. A story. West Branch, IA, Toothpaste Press, 1983. [chapbook]
Torturing Mr. Amberwell. New Castle, VA, Cheap Street, 1985. [chapbook]
The Silver Pillow. A tale of witchcraft. Willimantic, CT, Mark V. Ziesing, 1987 [1988]. [chapbook]
Mecca/Mettle. Seattle, Washington, Payseure & Schmidt, 2005. [chapbook]
The Wall of America. Tachyon, 2008. [forthcoming chapbook]
VerseHighway Sandwiches, with Marilyn Hacker & Charles Platt. N/p, privately published, 1970.
The Right Way to Figure Plumbing. Fredonia, N.Y., Basilisk Press, 1972.
Haikus of a Pillow, illus. Judi Carey. Binghamton, N.Y., Bellevue Press, 1980.
ABCDEFG HIKKLM NPOQRST UVWZYZ. London, Anvil Press Poetry in association with Wildwood House, 1981.
Burn This. London, Hutchinson, 1982; revised, Patchogue, N.Y., Wiseacre Books, 1995.
Orders of the Retina. West Branch, IA, Toothpaste Press, 1982.
Here I Am, There You Are, Where Were We?. London, Hutchinson, 1984.
Birth of a Pillow. Binghamton, N.Y., Bellvue Press, 1985.
The Tale of Dan de Lion. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Evening Coffee Editions, 1986.
Yes, Let's. New and selected poems. Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Dark Verses and Light. Baltimore, MD, John Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Haikus of an Ampart, illus. Ann Mikolowski. Minneapolis, Minnesota, Coffee House Press, 1991.
A Child's Garden of Grammar. Hanover, New Hampshire, University Press of New England, 1997.
About the Size of It. Anvil Press Poetry, 2007.
Billet-doux, illus. Barry Barnes. Tachyon, 2007.
Non-fictionThe Castle of Indolence: On Poetry, Poets and Poetasters. New York, Picador, 1995.
The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World. New York, The Free Press, 1998.
The Castle of Perseverance: Job Opportunities in Contemporary Poetry. Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 2002.
On SF. Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 2005.
The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten. Tachyon Press, Jul 2008.
Anthologies (edited)Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me (as Alfred Hitchcock, ghost-edited with Robert Arthur). New York, Random House, 1967.
The Ruins of Earth: An Anthology of Stories of the Immediate Future. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1973.
Bad Moon Rising. New York, Harper & Row, 1973.
The New Improved Sun: An Anthology of Utopian S-F. New York, Harper & Row, 1975.
New Constellations: An Anthology of Tomorrow's Mythologies, with Charles Naylor. New York, Harper & Row, 1976.
Strangeness: A Collection of Curious Tales, with Charles Naylor. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977.
PlaysThe Fall of the House of Usher (libretto) (produced New York City, 1979)
Frankenstein (libretto) (produced Greenvale, N.Y., 1982)
Ben Hur (adapted from the novel) (produced New York City, 1989)
The Cardinal Detoxes (verse play) (produced New York City, 1990)
Computer GamesAmnesia: A Text Adventure You'll Never Forget. San Mateo, Electronic Arts, n.d.
About the authorThe American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch by Samuel R. Delany. Elizabethtown, N.Y., Dragon, 1978.
A Tom Disch Checklist: Notes Towards a Bibliography by Chris Drumm. Polk City, IA, Chris Drumm, 1982.
A Checklist of Thomas M. Disch by Christopher P. Stephens. Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., Ultramarine, 1991.
(* Photo at top I found
here.)
The cracks are starting to show—and I don't mean the ones in the house, which are rapidly disappearing. I'm dead beat and the strain is starting to tell. Hence no posts for the past couple of days, although I've tried to keep up with the 'Rolling News', which you'll find over there on the right at the bottom of the links and whatnots.
My sleep pattern is completely screwed and we've another week of this to go. And after that, more chaos as the porch is pulled down and rebuilt, which will take about a month, although part of that time will be to allow the new foundations to dry—I'm hopeful that I'll have a week or so where I can get back to my normal, regular schedule for a bit. Maybe even get out of the house. Apart from B&Q on Sunday, I think I've only left the house twice in a fortnight: shopping last Saturday and a party Saturday night which I left disappointingly sober. And I spent half an hour of potential partying time digging through a friend's book collection to see if he had anything that I needed for the Sci-Fi Art book. (Hold your finger and thumb up to the screen and measure the width of this and you'll get an idea of how close I am to finishing.)
