CADY, Jack (Andrew) 1932-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born March 20, 1932, in Columbus, OH; died of bladder cancer, January 13, 2004, in Port Townsend, WA. Author. Cady was an award-winning author of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. After serving in the U.S. Coast Guard from 1952 to 1956, he earned a B.S. from the University of Louisville in 1961. The 1960s saw him jump from job to job, including work as a truck driver, auctioneer, and social-security claims representative, among other odd jobs. These various occupations helped him gain a wide variety of experiences, however, which made good material for his writings. At first, these were in the form of short stories that ranged from horror to mainstream but were often difficult to classify, which some critics have cited as the reason why Cady never managed to gain a large audience. He did, however, garner many awards, starting with an Atlantic Monthly "First" award in 1965 and other short-story awards. His short fiction was also frequently anthologized, and this led to a successful position as a creative writing teacher at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1968 to 1972. Cady also found some stability in his career as co-owner of a landscaping company in Port Townsend and was briefly the editor and publisher of the Port Townsend Journal in the mid 1970s. Cady's short-story collections began to see publication in the 1970s with books such as The Burning and Other Stories (1973) and Tattoo and Other Stories (1978); by the 1980s, he was publishing horror novels, including The Well (1980), McDowell's Ghost (1982), Embrace the Wolf (1993) and The Off Season: A Victorian Sequel (1995). He was also the author of the dystopian science-fiction novel The Man Who Could Make Things Vanish (1983). Cady received frequent praise for his fiction, winning a World Fantasy Award for the collection The Sons of Noah (1992), the Philip K. Dick Award for Inagehi (1994), and the Bram Stoker and Nebula Awards for the story "The Night We Buried Road Dog" (1998).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), January 21, 2004, p. 18.

Los Angeles Times, January 18, 2004, p. B18.

Washington Post, January 22, 2004, p. B7.