SCIFI.radio regrets to inform you that award-winning science fiction, fantasy and mystery author Barry Longyear has died. He passed away on May 6, 2025 at the Maine Health Franklin Hospital in Farmington, ME.

Barry Brookes Longyear was born May 12, 1942, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He passed away on May 6, 2025 in New Sharon, Maine at the age of 82.

Longyear was best known for his novella Enemy Mine, which was adapted into a movie starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr. The novella won the Hugo for Best Novella in 1980 and the Nebula Award in 1979. It was originally published in the September 1979 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

Longyear was the first writer to win the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Campbell awards in the same year. No other writer accomplished that until Rebecca Roanhorse in 2018.

Enemy Mine

In addition to the prize-winning novella, Longear expanded the concept into a trilogy, consisting of an expanded version of the novella and two subsequent books, The Tomorrow Testament and The Last Enemy. The entire trilogy, together with additional material,was published together as The Enemy Papers. Longyear co-wrote a novelization of the movie with Star Trek legend David Gerrold.

Circus World

Another series that began life in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine was the Circus World stories, about the descendants of the crashed spaceship City of Baraboo, which had been carrying a circus out to the stars. They crashed on the planet Momus and built a culture based on the circus traditions of their ancestors.

Mysteries

His Jaggers & Shad mystery stories, which feature two detectives in the Artificial Beings Crimes Division (Devon Office), are set in England, mostly in Exeter and the surrounding Devon countryside and villages.

Longyear’s The Good Kill, won Analog magazine’s AnLab award for Best Novella in 2006, and Murder in Parliament Street won the same award for 2007. The Hook won the Prometheus Award in 2021 for the year’s best work of libertarian science fiction.

Longyear also wrote a series of mystery novels about detective Joe Torio: The Hangman’s Son, Just Enough Rope, and the Rope, Paper, Scissors trilogy.

Infinity Hold series

Longyear’s Infinity Hold series, consisting of  Infinity Hold, Kill All the Lawyers, and Keep the Law, dealt with a society developed by a group of violent, dangerous convicts “dumped on a new planet without police or government.” Needless to say, the results are not as satisfactory as Australia, but it makes a fascinating counterpoint to the Circus World stories in having a planet settled by only one element of society.

Barry Longyear was nominated for the Locus Awards for Best Novelette for Savage Planet in 1980, for Chimaera in 1993, and for Death Addict in 1994. Although he was the acknowledge master of shorter forms, like novellas, novelettes, and short stories, Longyear also wrote multiple standalone novels, as well as three media tie-in novelizations.

He-cowrote the novelization of the movie Enemy Mine with David Gerrold. He wrote two Alien Nation books: The Change and Slag Like Me, both published in 1994.

Other Novels

• Sea of Glass
• Naked Came the Robot
• The God Box
• The Homecoming
• Jaggers & Shad: ABC Is for Artificial Beings Crimes
• The Candle Man

He also wrote the War Whisperer series of novels, book 6 of which won the Prometheus Award.

Personal Life

Barry Longyear was married to Regina Longyear for 58 years. For years Longyear struggled with substance abuse disorder, which naturally influenced some of his prose, both fiction and nonfiction.

He wrote St. Mary Blue, a novel set in a recovery facility, The Monopoly Man first published in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2009, and Yesterday’s Tomorrow: Recovery Meditations for Hard Cases.

Longyear founded the oldest continuously meeting Narcotics Anonymous (NA) group in the state of Maine, When COVID-19 hit, the group not only continued meeting online and spread further, helping other people struggling with recovery around the world.

Longyear is survived by his wife, Regina, his sister Jannettja, numerous nieces and nephews, and other family members, as well as hundreds of thousands of fans.

If you don’t have summer plans, go to your local library and check out one of Barry Longyear’s books.

Longyear died only a week before his 83rd birthday, but his prose will enlighten and entertain us far into the future. His physical form and presence may be lost to us now, but his ink is indelible.