Thursday, December 5, 2013

Marc Laidlaw (b. 1960) & Gary Myers (b. 1952)

Marc Laidlaw
Aka Mark Laidlaw
Author, Cartoonist, Poet, Essayist, Reviewer, Computer Game Designer
Born 1960, Laguna Beach, California

Gary Myers
Author, Illustrator, Computer Programmer
Born August 15, 1952, Lynwood, California

Marc Laidlaw and Gary Myers collaborated on a single story for Weird Tales. The title is "The Summons of Nuguth-Yug," and if you detect a scent of the Lovecraftian, you're on to something. Both authors are heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. Both started writing when they were quite young, and both were also published before their twentieth birthdays. Both incidentally are also artists.

Marc Laidlaw was born in 1960 in Laguna Beach, California, and attended the University of Oregon. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his first published story was "Spawn of the Ruins" in Shayol #1, November 1977. Mr. Laidlaw has published dozens more stories since then. In the late 1980s, he produced a fanzine called Freestyle. Mr. Laidlaw is also a writer of poems, essays, reviews, and the novels Dad's Nuke (1986), Neon Lotus (1988), Kalifornia (1993), The Orchid Eater (1994), The 37th Mandala (1996), and The Third Force (1996). He began playing Myst in the early 1990s and became very interested in computer games. His novel The Third Force is a tie-in to the game Gadget. Mr. Laidlaw joined Valve Software of Bellevue, Washington, in the late nineties. He has since worked as a writer and designer on the Half-Life series of games.

Gary Myers is an author of science fiction, horror, and fantasy stories. His first published story was "The House of the Worm," also known as "The Feast in the House of the Worm," in The Arkham Collector, Summer 1970. The story, written when its author was sixteen, was reprinted in Lin Carter's anthology New Worlds for Old in 1971 and in Mr. Myers' own collection (and his first book), The House of the Worm, in 1975. He has many stories and books to his credit, most in the vein of Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, and Clark Ashton Smith. Like his collaborator, Marc Laidlaw, Mr. Myers' work has been used in gaming ("H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands" supplement to the role-playing game The Call of Cthulhu). Gary Myers also works as a computer programmer.

Marc Laidlaw and Gary Myers' Story in Weird Tales
"The Summons of Nuguth-Yug" (Fall 1981)

Further Reading
Marc Laidlaw and Gary Myers are both on Wikipedia and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Mr. Laidlaw also has his own blog, Not So Few Monstrosities, at this URL:


You can read an informative interview with Gary Myers at Lovecraft Ezine, here:

http://lovecraftzine.com/2013/09/25/spawn-of-dark-dreams-an-interview-with-gary-myers-by-jason-thompson/

Marc Laidlaw's and Gary Myers' first books, Dad's Nuke (1986, cover art by Loretta Trezzo) and The House of the Worm (1975, cover art by the author).

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

No comments:

Post a Comment