Thursday 16 September 2010

E. C. Tubb - RIP

I learnt today that the veteran British writer EC Tubb died last week.


He was born in 1919 and he had a writing career that spanned some 60 years and which produced well over a 100 novels. He was best known for his science fiction in which he wrote short, action-packed novels that were always entertaining no matter how quickly he must have written them. He penned my favourite science fiction series The Dumarest Saga, an adventure yarn concerning all-action hero Dumarest's quest to find the forgotten world of Earth. The series packed a lot of quick-paced set pieces and story into the short novels, which ultimately ran to 31 books with another 2 later limited edition self-published works.

On a personal note I admire his writing style. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say he influences my own style as I'm nowhere near as good a writer, when writing I do often think of his no-nonsense, get on with the story and stop fannying about approach.


In addition to his sf Tubb also wrote 11 western novels and many of them were reprinted by Robert Hale, who have published my own westerns, with large print versions also being published as Linford Westerns. With his books still being reprinted quite frequently even in the last year, it was a proud moment for me when I went into a library a few months ago and saw one of my own books sitting right next to an E.C. Tubb novel.

Tubb was 90 and apparently he passed away on the day that he received an acceptance for his latest novel. Other than to be remembered fondly, is there a better way for a writer to go?

2 comments:

Oscar Case said...

Sorry to hear about the death of Mr. Tubb, but having a novel accepted at 90 is a great accomplishment. I should live so long!

Chris Creel said...

Thank you for this info about Mr. Tubb. I knew of his Sci-fi novels, of which I'm very fond. I think there are very few people today who continue to appreciate the works of the sci-fi writers from Mr. Tubb's generation.