| Hugh Cook We are writing to nominate New Zealand Fantasy author Hugh Cook (1956-2008) for a Julius Vogel Award, in the Special Awards Category of Services to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. We have made this nomination in the past, and hope it is acceptable to do so again. Hugh Cook was one of New Zealand's most successful yet least recognised authors, publishing seventeen books in 25 years, from Plague Summer in 1980 to Cancer Patient in 2005. Hugh's epic 10-Volume saga The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness sold over 450,000 copies, including 160,000 copies of the first in the series, The Wizards and the Warriors. This achievement alone is worthy of recognition, but Hugh did not stop writing when the Chronicles came to an end. Cook went on to champion many forms of electronic publishing and was an early adopter of Print-On-Demand technology and free PDF releases as a means of growing his audience. He was well ahead of the curve on many new technologies well before the mainstream even knew they existed. He was possibly one of the first authors in the world to write and publish a blog, building each page in code, long before the ease of Wordpress or Blogger. Cook's work was often brutal and always challenging, at turns elegiac and tortured. China Mieville describes Hugh Cook as "one of the most inventive, witty, unflinching, serious, humane and criminally underrated writers in imaginative fiction. Or anywhere.” Cook was one of New Zealand's most prolific and successful writers of Science Fiction/Fantasy, but that is not the only reason that he is deserving of this award. His success as a Kiwi writer in the mainstream market has inspired many New Zealand writers of SFF to embrace the genre where they otherwise may have been convinced that the road to publication was too hard. Julius Vogel Award-winning author Phillipa Ballantine is among them: 'I grew up with a dream of being a writer, but being from New Zealand as well I always assumed that I could never write in the genre I loved: science fiction and fantasy. I remember finding Hugh Cook among the books my Dad was reading, and loving the worlds he so effortlessly carried me away to. And then I found out that he was from New Zealand too. From that moment on I knew my dream was possible. For both his talent and being a trailblazer I'll always be grateful to Hugh Cook." Phillipa has gone on to publish many successful fantasy works, a testament to Cook's inspiration and his real impact on a whole new generation of New Zealand Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers. Cook also celebrated New Zealand and its lore in his work. His prose drew heavily on the landscape, places and mythology of Aotearoa, from the legendary Taniwha of Quilth, to the Ngati Moana, to a prison called Maremoremo. Our native flora and fauna often made cameo appearances in wild locales, including weka, kauri and rimu, to name but a few – all of this well over a decade before Peter Jackson delivered our country up to the world as Middle Earth. Cook refused to suffer from cultural cringe; he embraced our country’s uniqueness and used it to flavour his own inimitable world and style, however far removed his worlds may have been from our own. Cook was always ready to engage with his fanbase, and treated those who contacted him with respect and candour. He was truly a gentleman and a scholar. Hugh Cook was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 2005. He was treated and the disease went into remission, during which time he wrote a memoir entitledCancer Patient, which is available as a free ebook. He was on the road to recovery when the cancer returned. He passed away peacefully in November 2008, and is survived by his wife and daughter, who live in Auckland. Ultimately, Cook was both Wordsmith and Warrior. Poems, stories and characters were his tools and his weapons. He wrote with a passion, producing fiction at a prolific rate, and the English language would be greatly enriched if all the words and terms he had coined in his oeuvre were to be introduced into common parlance. He fought to find new ways forward in the publishing world, exploiting technologies that are only now starting to establish their true place in the electronic market. He maintained his integrity as an author to the very end, determined to always share the stories he had to tell, and not those that others wanted him to tell. At the end, he fought an unseen enemy – fought it and beat it, if only for a short time. Even in this he had a story to tell, and while the telling of that story may not have been able to completely defeat his insidious foe, it may yet bring comfort to others who face those same demons at some stage. To quote Mieville again, “To honour the memory of this wonderful and generous-spirited writer and man, those - too bloody few - of us who know his work should do all we can to bring it to the world's attention.” An article about Hugh Cook written by Dan Rabarts was published by World SF News Blog, and covers his life and work in more detail. It can be foundhere. Also, his obituary, published in the New Zealand Herald, can be foundhere. Hugh Walter Gilbert Cook (1956-2008): Wordsmith; Warrior; New Zealander. | 
