Douglas Hill

Douglas Arthur Hill, writer and editor: born Brandon, Manitoba 6 April 1935; married 1958 Gail Robinson (one son; marriage dissolved 1978); died London 21 June 2007.

Mild-mannered and softly spoken, Douglas Hill possessed an inner imagination thronged with spectacular out-of-this-world scenarios. The author of around 70 science-fiction and fantasy stories for young readers, he specialised in lone heroes forced to turn violent in order to defeat a series of outsize villains intent on controlling the universe. Other books took on topics as various as the Peasants' Revolt, Georgian London and the history of the supernatural, along with adult science fiction including two comic space operas.

Born in western Canada in 1935, the son of a train driver, Hill was raised in Saskatchewan. He became, in his own words, addicted to science fiction from an early age, with Flash Gordon comics a particularly potent influence. Reading English at the University of Saskatchewan, he moved on to the University of Toronto before deciding to get married and come to Britain in 1959 as a freelance writer. Working as an editor for Aldus Books, he was also a published poet.

Always politically on the left, in 1971 he followed in the footsteps of George Orwell by becoming Literary Editor of the socialist weekly Tribune, a post he held for 13 years. Gently encouraging to all his contributors, he regularly reviewed science fiction at a time when few others in the literary world took it seriously. Once overheard deploring the lack of good stories for young readers within this genre, he was challenged by a publisher to fill the void himself. The end result was Galactic Warlord (1979), the first of a quartet of novels that turned him into a best-selling writer.

The story starts with Keill Randor, the finest strike-group leader of the planet Moros, in search of fellow lost legionaries from his former country, now wiped out by a mystery attack of poison gas. Slowly dying of radiation, Keill is determined to take vengeance on his attackers while he can. Exploring every mean street in search of clues, he is the SF equivalent of the pulp- fiction private eye, permanently depressed but still sticking to a moral code and equal to every challenge.

But his fortunes change when he meets Talis, the elderly head of the Overseers - a collection of leading scientists trying to protect the universe from its most deadly enemies. Talis replaces Keill's diseased skeleton with bones made of an unbreakable alloy, a sensible precaution given the amount of savage fights to the death he still has coming to him. He also introduces him to Glr, a small, winged, telepathic, female alien from another planet. Together they finally get the better of Thr'un, one of the Deathwing group of killers working directly for the notorious Warlord, who is bent on destroying the galaxy and then ruling over its ruins.

Violent, at times melodramatic and not disdaining some of the clichés familiar from James Bond films when hero and villain have their final meeting, this novel also presses home the importance of trying to maintain peaceful world government when so many seem intent on war. This theme is continued in Deathwing over Veynaa (1980), Day of the Starwind (1980) and Planet of the Warlord (1981). In this last volume, Keill is briefly turned into a murderous robot before he is rescued by Glr as he is trying to kill her.

Known as the Last Legionary quartet, these novels were widely translated and went into many editions. Thrilling younger readers with their punchy style and gleeful episodes of violence, they also inspired numbers of authors writing science fiction for children today. Rhiannon Lassiter, for one, has openly acknowledged the importance of Hill's encouragement for her own fine novel Hex (1998).

Other titles quickly followed. The Huntsman (1982) was the first novel in a post-apocalyptic trilogy set in North America. Threatened by alien slavers, Finn Ferral - a genetically altered woodsman - and half-beast half-man Baer join up with some tribes of Native Americans to take on and eventually beat their oppressors against enormous odds.

Another fine trilogy started with Exiles from Colsec (1984). The acronym in the title refers to the sinister Colonisation Section that now runs and rules the earth. But Cord, a Scottish teenager, Samella, a female computer expert, and Heleth, a street-fighting girl, plus two other minor offenders, have other ideas. Exiled by way of punishment to the remote planet Klydor, the group finally routs visiting Colsec inspectors and wins the right to self-government.

Hill also produced many non-fiction books, with The Young Green Consumer Guide (1990), written with John Elkington, Joel Merkower and Julia Hailes, winning the Earthworm award for its year. There was also Bridging a Continent (1971), written under the pen-name Martin Hillman, about the discovery and exploration of the American West, Tribune 40 (1977), an edited history of the paper, plus more SF novels aimed at older readers.

For very young children, Tales of Trellie the Troog (1991), The Dragon Charmer (1997) and Melleron's Monsters (2000) were all written with quiet wit and gentle charm, qualities that were familiar to those who knew Hill as a friend or who had witnessed him winning over the toughest of pupils on one of his frequent school visits.

But it was as a writer of junior fantasies that he will be best remembered, with World of the Stiks (1994) and his Cade trilogy (1996) continuing to combine violent action with strong condemnation of exploitation and corruption in whatever setting. Hill had recently been working, full of enthusiasm, on the last volume of Demon Stalkers, a new trilogy for Macmillan yet to be published.

He was run over last Thursday by a London bus while attempting to negotiate a zebra crossing.

Nicholas Tucker