Michael G. Coney

Michael Greatrex Coney was a British science fiction writer and accountant. He and his wife Daphne were publicans in the UK, then hotel managers in Antigua, West Indies, from 1969-1972 where he first began writing science fiction. They relocated to Sidney, British Columbia in 1972, where Coney ran Porthole Press and served with the British Columbia Forest Service until his retirement in 1989. Coney published eighteen novels and over sixty short stories in his lifetime. His works have been translated into numerous foreign languages, including Dutch, French, Russian, and Japanese. His novel Brontomek! received the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel of 1976. He was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1995 for his novelette, "Tea and Hamsters", and his novels were three times nominated for the Prix Aurora. He died at the age 73 of pleural mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs, at the Saanich Peninsula Hospital palliative care unit. As a gift to readers, he made his final works available for free online. He is survived by his wife and a daughter, Sally Green.