Oh bugger. Never met him -- but wanted to. (And was hoping for another of those novels, some year or other.)

I saw him at cons, Charlie, but never did more than share a few sentances. I understand he'd been sick for a long time. Fans and freinds ran fundraisers to help pay his medical bills, and when illness forced him into bankrupcy, the hospital threatened to take ownership of his characters/writing/etc.

Yet another reason to decry this country's benighted medical system. It makes my heart ache to think how ill health and financial distress must have crushed him.

I've shared an elevator with him once or twice at a NecronomiCon in Tampa (www.stonehill.org) .. First Damon, and now George. Suck factor is high.

Argh! How sad . . . but not surprising, given the number of times he's been at the brink before.

He was posting to the SF newsgroup a few months back, regretful over burned bridges but hopeful about getting out of rehab and enthused about new projects.

I was a writing student at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and Effinger came in as a guest. He was extremely encouraging to me. There was something so cool about a LOCAL sci-fi writer. He was sick then....
I regret never meeting him again.

Egads, I hate to hear this. For some reason I picked up copies of When Gravity Fails, A Fire In The Sun, and The Exile Kiss a month back at a local used book store. I hadn't read them in years and came across three used copies in perfect condition. And here, four weeks later, he's dead. He was a terrific writer. RIP, George.

I'm a huge fan of the Audran novels, but as he's been out of print for years in the UK, his name was always semi unknown.
I came across the news whilst casually surfing and it blew the wind right out of me.
I remember reading somewhere that George had written "None of us have so many friends that we can afford to lose even a single one."
I think that probably says it better than I could.