Eric C. Williams

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(July 22, 1918 – January 21, 2010)

Eric Cyril Williams was a UK fan from London active from the 1930s to around 1962, and later as a professional writer. He was a member of the Science Fiction Association (SFA), joining in April 1937, and hosted the first meeting of the London branch in his home on October 3, 1937. Later he attended SFA meetings at The Flat and the Red Bull. He contributed to fanzines such as Novae Terrae, The Satellite, The Fantast and Amateur Science Stories and attended the Second British Convention in London in April 1938.

He had been a pacifist like many British fans but writing in Sam Youd's Fan Dance in August 1941 he said:

For this war, at least, I have given up my pacifistic ideas; they won't work. If we give in, in would come Nazism, out would go freedom, down would come darkness.

After the war he attended the Whitcon in 1948, and occasionally later conventions. He was also part of the group formed to published the magazine New Worlds, acting as subscription director.

Williams had published some short fiction in fanzines in the late 1930s. Between 1968 and 1981 he published ten science fiction novels, all but one for Robert Hale, followed by several short stories between 1999 and 2003.

In a letter to Then published in March 1989 he said:

I guess my fan activities fizzled out when I got married in 1962, and then left London for Sussex twenty years ago. Now and again I journeyed up to South Norwood to visit my old friend G. Ken Chapman and heard bits of news from him, but more and more my literary interests were spreading and SF took only a small part of my time. When Ken died my only link was Les Flood, who acted as my agent (more out of old friendship than any money I earned him), and when he gave up the agency my last remaining thread was Interzone.

He worked as a bookseller prior to becoming an author. An autobiography, For Mona, was self-published in 2010.


Person 19182010
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