1944–2022 · American fantasy novelist & Analog science-fact writer
James Richard Cook (1944–2022) was an American science fiction and fantasy author whose best-known books are the Wizardry series, beginning with Wizard’s Bane in January 1989. Wikiquote describes his writing as full of computer jokes and “best enjoyed by those who have a background in computers” — a fair summary of novels whose hero solves magical problems by debugging them. Alongside the fiction he wrote science-fact pieces for Analog on computing subjects, including “Neural Nets” in 1989 and “Cyberspaced Out: Manners and Mores in the Global Village” in 1992.