KOMO television in Washington State is reporting the sad news that Jack Cady has passed away at age 71. Cady won all the big awards in the speculative fiction field at one time or another, and did so after conquering the "literary" world in the early seventies by winning the Iowa Prize for Short Fiction in '72.

Though he was a Buckeye by birth, the Commonwealth has a strong claim on Mr. Cady, as is evidenced by the inclusion of his story "Play Like I'm Sheriff" in Morris Grubbs' excellent anthology of Kentucky short fiction, Home and Beyond. Cady lived and worked here for years and graduated from the University of Louisville in 1961 (just three years before Terry Bisson, coincidentally).

I first encountered his work when I read the novella "The Night We Buried Road Dog" in, I believe, the Ellen Datlow half of a Year's Best Fantasy & Horror anthology some years back, and I'm sad that I won't get to read more.