D.G. Compton (1930-2023)

Writer D.G. Compton, 93, died November 10, 2023 in Maine. David Guy Compton was born in London on August 19, 1930, later settling in the US.

His agents at the Virginia Kidd Agency sent the following tribute.

We had the great pleasure of having David visit us in Milford for the Black Bear Film Festival the year Death Watch, the 1979 Bertrand Tavernier film based on his book, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (1974) was featured on the main stage. It was a delightful and memorable weekend.

D.G. Compton was always writing, with his most recent novel, So Here’s Our Leo, being published by Wildside Press in April of 2022. Besides The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe — an “author’s cut” of which was published by NYRB Classics in 2016 — his many wonderful titles include The Steel Crocodile (1970), Farewell Earth’s Bliss (1966), and Synthajoy (1968), as well as numerous crime novels written as Guy Compton and gothic romances as Frances Lynch. David was also an authority on stammering, writing a non-fiction book on the subject, Stammering: Its Nature, History, Causes, and Cures (1993).

David was awarded the 2021 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award and was also honored as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association’s Author Emeritus in 2007. He is survived by his loving step son, Toby Savage, and many friends, among whom are his agents, who will greatly miss him.

The best way you can honor David Compton is to go read one of his books.

—The Virginia Kidd Literary Agency

For more about Compton, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.