Damn. Goodbye, Jeffrey Catherine Jones.

The illustrator has passed away.

I didn't even know who Jeffrey Jones was until a couple of years ago, when it occurred to me to figure out who painted the cover art I really liked on some old Fritz Leiber books. It turns out she/he was transgender in addition to being a wonderful artist, and the autobiographical note on her web site is charming.

I'll wait while you go read all that.

Fritz Leiber's fantasy stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser played a big role in my adolescent imagination. By comparison Conan the Barbarian was fun but a bit, well, Mary Sue. (I'm sure you understand.) And Tolkien, though wonderful in his way, is...well, let's say he doesn't really speak to modernity. (He has a lot to say about modernity, but I'm not sure he really knows what it is.) But Fafhrd and the Mouser negotiate a polyglottal, polytheistic, multi-universal, cosmopolitan world or urban romance where postmodern anxiety is as great an enemy as any elder god or Thing From The Deep. I love that about Leiber's stories, and Jones's art is the first thing I saw every time I picked up an Ace paperback of Swords And Deviltry. (Again? Yes, again. Shut up!)

Anyway, when I sat down at the computer I'd intended to make some dumb jokes about the immanent Rapture, but this is more important.

• Jeffrey Catherine Jones prints
• A documentary is in the works.
• There's an interview at Sequential Tart.