Jay Lake

Lake was born in Taipei, Taiwan; he was the eldest of three children born to Joseph Edward Lake (a U.S. foreign service officer serving in Taiwan at the time). As a child he lived in Nigeria;^[1] Dahomey (now called Benin); Canada; Washington, D.C.; and returned to Taiwan for a number of years when his father was posted there a second time. He attended high school at Choate Rosemary Hall (in Connecticut) and later graduated from the University of Texas in 1986.^[1]

Lake publicly revealed his advanced case of colon cancer.^[2] He was diagnosed in April 2008, and it then "progressed from a single tumor to metastatic disease affecting the lung and liver, recurring after multiple surgeries and chemotherapy courses."^[3][4][5][6] He used crowd funding through YouCaring to pay for whole genome sequencing, towards the "small possibility that the results of such a test...may suggest a treatment path."^[3][4][5][6] Lake died of the illness on June 1, 2014, just five days before his 50th birthday.^[7]

Lake is the subject of a documentary called Lakeside – A Year With Jay Lake by Waterloo Productions. The film, which follows Lake's fight against cancer, had a special work-in-progress screening August 30, 2013, at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio.^[8][9] As of May 2014^[update], it is in post-production and is scheduled to premier at Sasquan in Spokane Washington during the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention on 21, 2015.^[10]

His posthumously published collection Last Plane to Heaven was honored with the 2015 Endeavour Award.^[11]

• Trial of Flowers (2006) Night Shade Books (ISBN 1-59780-056-2)
• Madness of Flowers (2009) Night Shade Books (ISBN 1-59780-098-8)
• Reign of Flowers (unpublished)

In addition to these three novels there are at least two more stories set in the City Imperishable:

• "The Soul Bottles" from the anthology Leviathan 4: Cities (ed. by Forrest Aguirre, Night Shade Books, Nov. 2004) is the first published story of The City Imperishable.^[12]
• "Promises: A Tale of the City Imperishable" (2008) in Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy (ed. Ekaterina Sedia)

• Mainspring (June 2007) Tor Books (ISBN 0-7653-1708-7)
• Escapement (June 2008) Tor Books (ISBN 0-7653-1709-5)
• Pinion (March 2010) Tor Books

In addition to these three novels there are at least two more novellas set in the Mainspring Universe:

• "Chain of Fools" (Subterranean, Oct 2008) and
• "Chain of Stars" (Subterranean, Oct 2009), loose sequel to "Chain of Fools"

• Green (June 2009) Tor Books
• Endurance (November 2011)
• Kalimpura (January 2013)

In addition to these three novels there are at least two more stories set in the world of Green:

• "A Water Matter" (Tor.com, 2008)
• "The Passion of Mother Vajpai" (with Shannon Page) in Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2 (ed. by William Schafer, 2011)

• Calamity of So Long a Life (unpublished)
• Their Currents Turn Awry (unpublished)
• The Whips and Scorns of Time (unpublished)
• All Our Sins Remembered (unpublished)
• "To Raise a Mutiny Betwixt Ourselves" (The New Space Opera 2, 2009, Harper Voyager)
• "Torquing Vacuum" (Clarkesworld Magazine, Feb 2010)
• "Permanent Fatal Errors" (Is Anybody Out There?, June 2010, DAW Books)
• "To This Their Late Escape" (The Sky That Wraps, 2010, Subterranean Press)
• "A Long Walk Home" (Subterranean Press, Winter 2011)
• "The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future" (Spring 2012, Subterranean Press)

• Rocket Science (2005) Fairwood Press (ISBN 0-9746573-6-0)
• Death of a Starship (2009) MonkeyBrain Books (Sunspin Universe)
• The Specific Gravity of Grief (novella) (2010) Fairwood Press
• The Baby Killers (novella) (2010) PS Publishing
• Original Destiny, Manifest Sin (forthcoming)

• Greetings From Lake Wu, Wheatland Press (2003) (ISBN 0-9720547-2-3)
  • Greetings from Lake Wu; Signed, numbered, luxury edition, Traife Buffet (2006) (ISBN 0-9787494-0-5)
• Green Grow the Rushes-Oh, Fairwood Press (2003) (ISBN 0-9746573-2-8)
• American Sorrows, Wheatland Press (2004) (ISBN 0-9755903-0-8)
• Dogs in the Moonlight, Prime Books (2004) (ISBN 1-930997-56-6)
• The River Knows Its Own, Wheatland Press (2007)
• The Sky That Wraps, Subterranean Press (2010) (ISBN 978-1-59606-266-5)
• Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection, Tor Books (2014) (ISBN 978-0-7653-7798-2)

METAtropolis: The Wings We Dare Aspire, with Ken Scholes, WordFire Press (May 2014) (978-1614751564)

• Polyphony
  • Polyphony 1 (with Deborah Layne), Wheatland Press (July 2002) (ISBN 0-9720547-0-7)
  • Polyphony 2 (with Deborah Layne), Wheatland Press (April 2003) (ISBN 0-9720547-1-5)
  • Polyphony 3 (with Deborah Layne), Wheatland Press (2003) (ISBN 0-9720547-3-1)
  • Polyphony 4 (with Deborah Layne), Wheatland Press (2004) (ISBN 0-9720547-6-6)
  • Polyphony 5 (with Deborah Layne), Wheatland Press (2005) (ISBN 0-9755903-5-9)
  • Polyphony 6 (with Deborah Layne), Wheatland Press (December 2006)
• All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (with David Moles), Wheatland Press/All-Star Stories (2004) (ISBN 0-9720547-7-4)
• TEL: Stories, Wheatland Press (2005) (ISBN 0-9755903-3-2)
• Spicy Slipstream Stories (with Nick Mamatas), Lethe Press (2008)
• The Exquisite Corpuscle (with Frank Wu), Fairwood Press (2008)
• Other Earths (with Nick Gevers), DAW Books (April 2009)
• Footprints (with Eric T. Reynolds), Hadley Rille Books (July 2009) (ISBN 0-9819243-9-5)
• Down In The Ship Mines (2012) in SQ Mag, Edition 4 (ed. Sophie Yorkston)

 

Wikiquote has quotations related to Jay Lake.

• Official website
• Jay Lake at IMDb
• Lakeshore, Lake's blog at LiveJournal
• Jay Lake at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database