I can’t recall the first time I meet Maureen Kincaid Speller, but I assume (with some sense of certainty) that it would have been at one of the first few BSFA gatherings I attended in London, some time back in the Noughties.

I found her an easy person to like, which is rarer than you might think. A lot of it probably had to do with the way in which she would just kinda include you in a conversation or event, even if she didn’t know you that well: an assumption not of friendship, exactly, but of the potential for such. Perhaps that assumption was extended to me because we kind of knew each other already from the blog scene, and various review columns in the UK sf scene… I don’t know. But I always got a garrulous vibe from her, which could feel like it belonged to someone much younger than she was. Always ready with a whispered or muttered aside, or with a “what did you think?”, she took genre literature and its critique very seriously, but its fandom with no more seriousness than it deserved, and herself with perhaps a little less than was merited. She was fun, smart, and generous with both her time and her smile. I’m very sad to know she’s gone.

I’m all the more sad for her partner Paul, perhaps. As someone who did not grown up in an environment well-stocked with examples of marriages or partnerships based on genuine yet unsentimental affection and shared interests, Maureen and Paul’s coupledom always seemed to me to be something of a unicorn: a love worthy of the word, a love to aspire to. I hope that love, and its memory, will sustain him through the grief and pain.

Go easy, Mo.