Vaya con Dios, Ray Daley

Ray Daley passed away on Friday, 19 April 2024.

He had a heart attack on 28th March and was still in hospital, anticipating a long recovery. Apparently that was not to be. This is as much as I know at this time.

If you’ve been following Stupefying Stories, his name should seem familiar. Ray was a frequent contributor to SHOWCASE in the past few years, and his byline has shown up here often. Ray was a prolific writer with plenty of ambition and talent, and a seemingly unstoppable desire to write stories and get published. 

In taking a look through our files before writing this post, I was surprised to find that he first arrived in my inbox six years ago, with a charming little story entitled “Hotel Oblivion.” I rejected that one; I reject quite a lot of stories that are pretty good, but not what we’re looking for at the moment. Over the next few years I read and rejected a lot of stories from Ray, and each time, he got a little closer to getting an acceptance. What I saw in Ray Daley was someone who had amazing drive, and who was working hard at becoming a better writer. I’d been expecting that one of these days he was finally going to put all the pieces together, and then we might get a few great stories from him before he graduated to the pro ranks and left us behind, the way our contributors so often do. When “The Haunted Spaceship” showed up in my inbox last year I thought he’d finally done it, and I was proud to publish that story in Stupefying Stories 26.

Now he’s left us behind, but not in the way I would have preferred.

We have one more story by Ray in the SHOWCASE queue—“Welcome to the Death Machine Factory Tour”—that we were planning to publish in May. We’re still going to do that. I’m given to understand that Ray had a lot of stories waiting to be published in a lot of places, so you’re going to be seeing his byline popping up all over the place for months to come. 

In the meantime, while you’re waiting for the Death Machine Factory Tour to start, here are some links to other things he published with us.

The Pete Wood Challenge stories

“Fixing Broken Dreams”
“The Message”
“For Sale: Used Time Machine. No Refunds!”
“Too Hot to Handle”
“The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb”

Movie Reviews

Dune
Every Zombie Movie Ever Made
Back to the Future

Dawn of Time

Episode 1
Episode 8

In closing, rather than my saying more about Ray Daley, I’d rather share his words with you. This is something he wrote to me about four years ago, when I asked him the question I ask a lot of aspiring writers: Why do you want to write science fiction?

Ray’s answer: 

Those writers we enjoy, who are our route to the world of what I lovingly call “made-up crap,” those are the giants whose shoulders we stand on. They raise us to the heights our dreams drive us to aim at.

I blame Douglas Adams. I was 9, I bought Hitch Hikers, the 1st book I ever got with my own money. My life was Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee to Tom Baker), Space:1999, Star Trek, Blake’s 7.

With the first Space Shuttle launches, the future was now.

As a young boy, I was given all the room I wanted by a teacher to write whatever the hell I wanted to. Sure, it might have been a weak rip-off of the last Doctor Who episode I’d seen, but it was me throwing every ounce of my imagination into it.

Douglas Adams was one of many who piggybacked me towards my dreams. And every time I write a new story, I honour his memory.
  

And now, it’s time for us to honor Ray’s memory.

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