David Gemmell dies at 57

[Perpetual Man]

A terrible, terrible shame. I have not read any of his books for far too long, but loved The Drenai Books and the character of Jon Shannow was just a phenominal creation.

57 is a far too short life, but what a bounty of memorable characters he gave us - just from the books I read so many stand out...

Druss, Shannow, Waylander, Alexander and so many others will keep his memory alive.

[Lacedaemonian]

I am so filled with sadness. I am not sure what to think. He filled so many days of my life with his wonderful stories.

[Werthead]

Crap.

I've never been a massive fan of Gemmell's, feeling him to be rather overrated in many areas (particularly Legend, which left me cold). However, I warmed to him immensely after reading the superb Wolf in Shadow and its sequels in the Siptrassi series, and many of his other single novels I've read of his have been enjoyable, hard-edged fantasy adventures. The image of the wreck of the Titanic lying on the exposed seabed of the Atlantic is still a powerful, classic fantasy image. I was looking forward to reading the Troy Trilogy once it was completed as well.

Having read his interviews, it's also clear he had a bloody hard early life and had to work hard to succeed. So condolences to his family, but he brought happiness to millions of readers and leaves behind a rather impressive and lengthy body of work.

[Winters_Sorrow]

A true British fantasy great who's enthusiasm and vision created so many enduring characters and tales.

A great loss indeed. My thoughts are with his wife & children tonight

[dragula_66]

my god!!

this is the first i heard of it. gemmell was the one that got me into this genre, and has remained my favourate authour no matter what else i was reading.

my condolences to his family and friends.

i propose a toast to david gemmell's life...lift your drinks everyone and lets have a minute of silence for a great writer.

[Hellbunny]

Just thought I'd cut n' paste my obituary from Barbelith (would post the link but I'm new, so I'm not allowed).

Following heart bypass surgery two weeks ago, the fantasy author David Gemmell passed away on Friday morning.

David Gemmell was one of my favourite writers. I've been reading his books since Legend was first published, since I was ten years old, so for two-thirds of my entire life. I remember that the first book that I ever loved more than Dr Seuss was a paperback of Oliver Twist that my mother gave me when I was nine. The second, and the one that made me first want to become a writer, was a library copy of Legend.

Prolific as hell (this September it'll be thirty-one books in twenty-two years), Gemmell managed to make practically every book sing in its own way. Early on, he developed the knack for perfect moments of character within the narrative that ended up defining his style throughout his career. The following may contain spoilers. And possibly traces of nuts.

Like in Waylander, when the brutal, amoral thug Durmast dies saving our hero from werewolves, no one ever knowing the reason for his sudden heroism, the murderer taking it to the grave with him...

Like in Winter Warriors, where the mortally wounded old soldier Bison takes the two demon swordsmen off the side of the mountain with him to save the child under his protection ("Did you know... I have wings? Great, white wings...")...

Like at the end of Wolf In Shadow, with a dying Jon Shannow riding off just like ******* Shane towards a Jerusalem that only he can see...

Like at the beginning of The Last Guardian, published two years later due to the immense outcry for more stories of The Jerusalem Man, starting with the simple sentence: "But he did not die." Cue a fourteen year-old Hellbunny punching the air like Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club...

Like Echoes Of The Great Song, where the psychotic Viruk, a member of a vampiric ruling caste that literally feeds from the lower classes that he despises, is ordered to take part in a council debate over whether his people should stand and sacrifice themselves against an unstoppable invader to save those same despised serfs, and, despite himself, enters a passionate argument on their behalf that wins the debate...

Like Lord Of The Silver Bow, with Argurios, the taciturn and inarticulate Mykene hero, forced to stand shoulder to shoulder with a man he has sworn to kill to defend the enemy city of Troy from his own sword brothers, dying on the steps of the megaron from a traitor's arrow...

There are too many more to count. One of the things that kept Gemmell apart from the ranks of other genre writers was his refusal to cling to his most popular recurring characters past their sell-by date, the desire to keep everything fresh. Waylander and Jon Shannow starred in three books each, and he crafted such a fitting, beautiful death for each at the last, probably so that he wouldn't be tempted to bring them back as much as anything else. Druss, the Legend (his favourite to the end, based on his beloved stepfather Bill), the huge axeman who died three-quarters of the way through Legend the novel defending the greatest fortress in the Drenai world against the greatest army that world had ever seen, the struggle itself an allegory for the struggle he was facing at the time against cancer, Dros Delnoch's reprieve as arbitrary as his own remission.

It wasn't just straight heroic, sword and sorcery fantasy, either. Sensing an editorial cul-de-sac following the success of his first three Drenai novels, he created an entirely new world, a post-apocalytic Western set in our own world centuries after the earth tipped on its axis, our culture preserved in small villages and frontier towns, a world where a desperate belief in the Bible and in a Christian God finds Jon Shannow, a half-mad gunfighter constantly searching for the lost city of Jerusalem, running up against the Satan-worshipping Hellborn cult in his quest to heal his broken heart. Lion Of Macedon and Dark Prince are historical fantasy ("History not as it was, but how it ought to have been", as he introduced the former), both dealing with the ancient story of Alexander the Great through the eyes of his great general Parmenion, skilfully using known history and actual figures in the legend as a jumping off point for a work of fantastic fiction, much as he had done earlier in his career with the re-imagining of the King Arthur legend with the story of Culain, the Lance Lord (which, by the way, ties into his Jon Shannow books, despite the events taking place nearly two thousand years earlier). Morningstar, a slim stand-alone novel, was a bit of a dark horse - his only novel written in the first person, it wasn't until re-reading it a year after purchase that I realised that it was the story of Robin Hood, seen through the Gemmell filter.

Along similar lines, his last books were devoted to the telling of the story of Troy, in Lord Of The Silver Bow and the upcoming Shield Of Thunder. The (possibly apocryphal) story goes that Gemmell, horrified by the anaemic telling of the story of Troy in the Wolfgang Petersen film of 2004, and equally horrified by the lazy critical response that bizarrely blamed all the gaping gaps and obvious faults in the narrative on the absence of the Greek gods in the story, abandoned the novel he was preparing and decided to show Petersen et al how it should have been done. Lord Of The Silver Bow is possibly the best thing Gemmell ever wrote. Every character, from the protagonists on down, bursts with an originality and a depth you rarely see in any fiction, let alone a re-telling of one of the oldest stories in the world, and all without any magic or gods as hooks to hang the narrative on. It's tight, controlled, passionate story-telling of the first order, and it's not even gotten to the war and the resulting siege yet. As usual, Gemmell turned the story upside down by pursuing lesser known elements and using them to centre his narrative. His hero is Aeneas, but referred to throughout by his nickname Helikaeon. Paris is a skinny, homely and sensitive boy obsessed with poetry and with the equally homely Helen. Hector is presumed dead throughout, and only actually appears at the end. Priam is a hard, arrogant bastard, but as usual Gemmell takes pains to show different facets of such characters, never content to give us merely two dimensions when three will do. Even the Mykene foot soldiers fighting the protagonists in the final act are fully fleshed out. The same is true of the rapist and murderer responsible for the butchery of Helikaeon's family, who is seen to be a good man with a genuinely happy family life at home in the chapter where Helikaeon seeks revenge (Gemmell could never see the point of creating a human character - even a minor character - who didn't feel like a real person, and so continually presents the reader with apparent contradictions in order to lead the reader to question their assumptions. One of his greatest heroes begins life as Waylander the amoral assassin, the man who killed the Drenai king. Three books chronicle the redemption and eventual heroism of a man most fantasy writers would throw away as a second act antagonist for the hero). The third, as yet untitled novel in his Trojan series would probably have been released in early 2008. On a purely selfish level, and knowing how quickly Gemmell was capable of writing when a story had him by the guts, I'm hoping that he'd finished it before he died...

There's too much more to write, and not enough time. On a personal level, my favourite two Gemmell stories are more about Gemmell, rather than by Gemmell. He relates in an introduction to a Drenai omnibus a story to explain the nature of his stepfather Bill, the man he based his most enduring creation Druss upon. Gemmell as a child was terrified of vampires, and one night awoke screaming from a dream in which he was convinced that a vampire was in his room. His stepfather hugged him as he wept, and young David told him about the monster, to which Bill replied, "I know, son. I broke its neck. Won't have no vampire scaring my boy." Gemmell never dreamed of vampires again, not with his hero protecting him. The other is actually something someone related in the comments section of the BBC website yesterday, about a starstruck meeting with Gemmell at a book signing. Not knowing what to say, and suddenly inexplicably terrified, the fan wordlessly thrust his book to the author for signing. Gemmell took one look at him, and as he signed his book, began almost apropos nothing to relate the story of meeting the creator of Spider-Man many years before in a similar situation, and the paralysing fear he had suddenly felt at being face to face with the man, with one witty and self-deprecating anecdote establishing a connection with the fan that he could never have made on his own.

David Gemmell, 1948 to 2006, often called the greatest living writer of heroic fantasy, made a living from making the personal heroic, and the heroic personal, from weaving compelling stories from basic archetypes, from utilising a compassionate understanding of human strengths and frailties to define, and redefine, and redefine again, the nature of heroism in its smallest acts, its greatest triumphs and its most petty of thoughts and deeds. To borrow a phrase from his Drenai novels - he was a man to walk the mountains with.

[the_faery_queen]

that's really lovely
and it made me cry again

[kaneda]

Apart from the fact that he wrote a couple of my favourite books, he was only 57. Geez, really depressing news

[Budo]

im sorry to hear about David, it is a Big loss for the fantasy world

[scalem X]

Sad and weird.
I reread the last waylander novel "hero in the shadows" once more less than a month ago (for no particular reason) (then afterwards lending it to someone) and I was planning on trying to contact David Gemmel and say that as a stand alone it would be a great movie script. Next thing I hear the guy has passed away. Now my lazyness was fatal.

His writing has both enjoyed me and taught me about chapters.

[PenDragon]

I'm gutted. He was one of my favourites and I don't like the fact I have to type was instead of is. Far too young.

The Rigante books are my favourite Gemmell books and Jaim was one of my favourite characters. Ravenheart even made me 'remove the something in my eye' a little.

Even more so now I've just read this...

Ever wondered where an author like David Gemmell gets his ideas from? In October 2000, while a guest author at the World Fantasy Convention in Texas, he gave his fans the following insight into his source of inspiration...

'There was this boy. He lived in fear. Not the tiny fears of manhood, but the awesomely powerful, living, breathing fear that only children can experience. He was different, this boy, from the other boys who lived in this bomb damaged London Street some few years after World War Two. He had no father.

Some of the other children had no father, but their lack was honorable. Dad died in the war, you know. He was a hero. This boy's lack was the subject of sly whispers from the adults, and open jeering from his peers. This boy's mother was - the boy heard so many times - a whore.

Happily the boy was only six, and had no real understanding of what the word meant. Anyway the word was less hurtful than the blows that would follow it. Most of the blows came from other children, but sometimes adults too would weigh in.

It was all baffling to the child. What he knew was that, before venturing out into the narrow streets and alleys, he had to peer from the windows of the small apartment to see if there were other children about. Only he didn't think of them as children. They were enemies, and he was frightened. Fear was the ever present companion. Fear was grafted to him. The journey to school was fraught with peril. The dark of the night brought fearful dreams.
His mother read him stories about heroes, and tried to encourage him to stand up for himself. But stories were just words, and words could not stop the punches, the pinches and the slaps.


The boy never dreamed of heroes. Not until he met one.

It was a bright, cold morning and he was sitting on a wall. One of the boys who made his life miserable ran up, shouting and gesticulating. The boy - more in panic than courage - finally struck out, punching his enemy in the face. The other child ran off screaming. His father came running from the house. 'You little bastard!' he shouted.

The boy took off as fast as he could, but no six year old can outrun a grown man. Within moments he grabbed the boy by the collar, swinging him from his feet.

Just then a huge shadow fell over the pair. The man - who had looked so threatening moments before - now looked small and insignificant against the looming newcomer. This colossus reached out and took hold of the man by the shirt, pushing him up against a wall.

In a low voice, chilling for its lack of passion, he asked. 'Do you know who I am?'

The man was trembling. Even the boy could feel the dreadful fear emanating from him.


'C.c.course I know who you are, Bill. Course I do.'

'Did you know I was walking out with this boy's mother?'

'Jesus Christ... I swear I didn't, Bill. On my mother's life.'


'Now you do.'

The big man let the little man go. He slid part way down the wall, recovered and stumbled away. Then the giant leaned over the boy and held out a hand that seemed larger than a bunch of bananas. 'Better be getting home, son,' he said.


The world changed that day. Men like Bill do change the world. They are the havens, the safe harbours of childhood. They are the watch hounds who keep the wolves at bay. They have an instinctive understanding of the child that is denied to the wise.

Two years later, as my stepfather, he cured me of dreams of vampires coming to drink my blood. My mother had tried explaining to me they were just dreams. They weren't real. It didn't work. She took me to a child psychologist, who showed me pictures, told me stories, explained about the birth of myth and the way that fear created pictures in our night time thoughts. It was very interesting, but it did nothing for my nightmares.

One night I woke up screaming - to find Bill sitting by my bedside.

'There's a vampire, dad. Its trying to get me.'


'I know, son,' he said, softly. 'I saw it.'

'You saw it?'


'Yeah. I broke its bloody neck. I won't have no vampires in my house'


I never dreamt of vampires again.

Years later, when I wrote my first novel, I used Bill as the model for a character. His name was Druss the Legend. Bill re-appeared in many novels thereafter, in many guises.


Always flawed, but always heroic.

Three years ago, at the age of 82, Bill was mugged on the streets of London. Three muggers broke his jaw, his nose and two of his ribs. He still managed to 'chin' one of them and knock him to the ground. That was Bill.

Last April he died.


And I wrote Ravenheart, and gave Bill centre stage.


Jaim Grymauch, who strides the highlands like a giant, is my homage to Bill, and to all those world changing fathers who pass away without fanfare; who leave the world just a little brighter than it was.

Men who know how to deal with vampires.'

David Gemmell

Sorry have to go now...I have something in my eye...

[I, Brian]

I saw Lace mentioned something about Gemmell having died on another thread and I thought he was koing - didn't realise what had actually happened.

Met him a few years back and he seemed very supportive of new authors - and was one of the few to answer a letter I sent a number of authors asking for advice on submitting to the publishing world.

Sad to see him go.

[Jason_Taverner]

so sad my thoughts are with his family he gave us some many great stories and adventures and Druss. Have you been to locksmiths link the bbc website there are comments from authors, fans and family members I think its a great but sad tribute.

[izzy667]

So sad. My condolances to his family.

This will sound totally selfish, but what will happen with the Troy trilogy. I'm concerned about the 3rd part. He has probably allready written some of it. I hope it will be published at leat as an unfinished book.

[pyan]

A great, untimely and sad loss. Legend was one of the main books that moved me on from "hard" science-fiction to fantasy, over 20 years ago(!) In Druss, I think he created one of the greatest of heroes, and the Drenai series is one of my all-time top ten. Bayete!