John Glasby (1928-2011)

Literary agent Philip Harbottle reports that his client, prolific British writer John Glasby (who also wrote as A.J. Merak), 82, died June 5, 2011.

Glasby began publishing in the 1950s, producing vast quantities of SF and fantasy novels under a variety of house names and personal pseudonyms for Badger Books and other publishers. He also wrote novels in the war, crime, thriller, romance, and Western genres. Some of his SF was republished in the US as by A.J. Merak. SF novel Project Jove appeared under his own name in 1971. After retirement, Glasby published numerous supernatural stories in American small press magazines and Cthulhu Mythos anthologies. In recent years new supernatural stories have appeared in original anthologies. A new collection of ghost stories, The Substance of a Shade, appeared in 2003, followed by novel The Dark Destroyer (2005). SF Mystery of the Crater was published in 2010. All of his Badger Books supernatural novels were revised and republished in the UK, and are scheduled to be reprinted in the US. In 2007 he began writing new books in the late John Russell Fearn’s Golden Amazon series, with four novels published or forthcoming.

John Stephen Glasby was born September 23, 1928 in Nottingham, and attended Nottingham University. He worked as a research chemist and an astronomer, was a member of the British Astronomical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and authored several science textbooks.

In 2009 he fell and broke one hip, and later broke the other. Despite his loss of mobility, he continued writing until serious health complications set in. He is survived by his wife and their five children.