New-wave author John Thomas Sladek died March 10 of a chronic respiratory problem.

Sladek’s first published story was "The Poets of Millgorve, Iowa" in New Worlds in 1966. He published nearly 50 short stories, 11 novels and two collections, sometimes writing as Thom Demijohn or Cassandra Knye (with Thomas M Disch). He received the British Science Fiction Award for Tik-Tok.

Sladek's most popular books include The Reproductive System, one of the first (and still funniest) stories about an out-of-control self-replicating system; Roderick, or the Education of a Young Machine and its sequel Roderick at Random, his definitive word on robots and artificial personalities; and The New Apocrypha: a Guide to Strange Sciences and Occult Beliefs, still one of the best books on popular pseudo-science. He also published what some regard as the best series of SF satires in the history of the genre.

He is survived by his wife, Sandra Gunter Sladek, his daughter, Dorothea Sladek, and his granddaughter, Venetia. The daughter, who lives in England, was en route to see him when he died.

He was sixty-two.

Posted March-11-2000