Obituary: James P Hogan

• James P Hogan, scnience fiction writer• Born: 27 June, 1941, in London• Died: 12 July 2010, in Ireland, aged 69

THE remarkably creative James P Hogan was the author of numerous published works, including 26 science fiction novels, 35 short stories, two non-fiction works plus numerous articles and essays of non-fiction science writing.

Some of the content in the latter works was deemed highly controversial, but his talent was undeniable.

Born in London in 1941, James Patrick Hogan was the son of James, an Irishman and Agnes, a German. He was raised with his step-siblings after his mother's first husband died from the effects of being gassed in the trenches of the First World War and she married Hogan's father.

He grew up around the Portobello Road are of West London, a working-class environment with a strong community spirit. Born with deformed feet, Hogan underwent a sustained period of corrective surgery which led to prolonged sofa time and what he referred to as "an insatiable appetite for reading books - an interest that has obviously persisted".

Post-surgery, however, he was an extremely active teenager, indulging in various outdoor pursuits such as hill walking and rock climbing, particularly in the mountains of north Wales and Scotland.

Despite his passion for reading and the acquisition of knowledge, Hogan was not academically inspired and found school boring and too "classically orientated". He left school at 16, trying his hand at a succession of inappropriate, dead-end jobs, but the idea of becoming a writer had already formed.

Instead of pursuing his interest his mother coerced him in to applying for a government research scholarship, which he got and ended up at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. It was the beginning of a five-year placement during which time he developed his skills in electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering, but his end specialisation was electronics.

The courses provided a well-structured and demanding period of practical and theoretical education and standards were high. This did not prevent Hogan from marrying the first of his four wives, Iris, and becoming a father for the first time, to twins. He was 20 years old.

This scuppered a possible physics scholarship at Cambridge University, the economic pressures of having a young family forcing him to take active employment as a design engineer rather than undergo any more periods of education.

His first employer was Solarton Electronics whom he joined in 1961; the company was based in Farnborough, allowing Hogan and his family to remain in the area. In 1962, he crossed the M3 and moved on to Racal Electronics in Bracknell, where he helped develop electronic equipment for data analysis.

After spells at International Telephone & Telegraph and Honeywell, in 1974 he joined Digital Equipment Corporations Laboratory Data Processing Group, which would lead to a move to Maynard, Massachusetts, in the United States, in 1977. It was in 1977 that he married his second wife, Lyn.

His passion for reading and writing had remained, and he had been writing science fiction for many years, partly due to an office bet. Having watched 2001 but not understood the ending, his work colleagues made a wager with Hogan that he couldn't write a sci-fi novel and get it published. He did, and it was called Inherit the Stars. The book did not make the author wealthy - he earned 50 plus his advance - but it did catalyse his novel production rate and by 1979 he had written four more.

These were well received if not big sellers, and Hogan's creative juices were flowing. In a period of exhausting change, he embarked on the renovation of large house in Boston, split from Lyn and quit his job with DEC. He left Boston at the end of 1979 with little more than a couple of bags, his typewriter and a contract for a new book.

Shortly afterwards, he met, Jackie, an American woman with three young boys, and they married, bought a house and began renovations. As Hogan himself wrote: "As is so often said of life, we live and we learn . . . and then we forget." The couple then moved wholesale to County Wicklow, in Ireland, and to yet another big house. The cultural change proved too much for Jackie and the boys, so the couple traded the big house for two smaller properties, one in Ireland and one in Florida, and Hogan travelled between the two, working in Ireland and relaxing in Florida.

Their marriage was obviously under strain and when the boys were old enough to leave home, they separated. Hogan married once more, this time to Sheryl, another American in 2006.

Hogan wrote prolifically and on all manner of subjects, although almost all of his fictional work had a science base. He was an expert writer of what is termed "hard sci-fi", which is science fiction that is not outwith the realms of possibility. His science and engineering background allowed him to explore the scientific world and take the reader to exhilarating but plausible places.

His best works include the Minervan Experiment, a series which began with Inherit the Stars and spawned four sequels. It follows the life of scientist Victor Hunt, who discovers an alien race and then attempts to reach their home planet.

His work was especially popular in Japan, influencing animated television series and comic strips. He was the recipient of three Seiun awards, a Japanese award for science fiction writing.

In 2004, he released Kicking the Sacred Cow, Heresy and Impermissible Thoughts in Science, in which he challenged conventional wisdom on a variety of subjects including HIV/Aids, global warming and evolution.

But it was his views on the Holocaust which caused the biggest controversy, after he praised some of the work carried out by Holocaust deniers Arthur Butz and Mark Weber. This was a stance he reinforced in a 2010 essay on the work of Ernst Zndel, writing of the Holocaust that he felt much of the accepted history contained "claims that are wildly fantastic, mutually contradictory, and defy common sense and often physical possibility".

James Hogan died suddenly in his house in Ireland. He is survived by his fourth wife Sheryl and his six children.