Gareth Thomas 1945-2016

The year's almost done, and many of us will not be sorry to see it go. We've lost too many this year; the friends, the famous, the icons of our youth. For me that includes someone who fell under all three headings. I have tried for months to write this entry. I am supposed to be a writer, and yet the words slip through my fingers as I try to type.

One of the things about science fiction fandom is that there are friends you only ever see at cons, who you may not even communicate with outside cons, who are yet good and dear friends you fall upon with cries of joy and take up the conversation with as if it had not been months since you last spoke. For me Gareth Thomas was not just one of these friends, but the one I'd known longest. Nearly twenty-one years ago I decided that it was time to go to one of these cons I'd been hearing about in books and magazines over the years, and when I checked the con listings in the small ads in one of those magazines, I found there would be one only an hour's drive away, with one of my favourite actors from one of my favourite shows on the guest list.
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