The Mumpsimus

© 2009 Mari Kurisato We knew this day was coming, but that doesn't really make it easier. After years of struggling with cancer, Jay Lake has died . Jay leaves a legacy of family, of friendships, of writing, and of science. He had his genome sequenced, and he submitted himself to grueling experimental trials. He could have gone more quietly into this good night; he chose instead to try to help the people of a future that has been denied to him. One of his greatest legacies may be to have helped, in some small or large way, to move us closer to a cure for cancer. In place of eulogy, here's something I wrote when Jay could read it . Farewell, friend.

© 2009 Mari Kurisato I don't want to be the cancer guy. I want to be the sci-fi guy. ... One of the things I realized almost out of the gate, literally the second day I was in the hospital, was I'm not going to get very much that's good out of this experience, maybe get to keep my life for a while, so I may as well make something of it that will help other people. —Jay Lake In all of my recent reflecting on 2013 , I neglected to mention one of the most powerful and educational bodies of writing that I read through the year: Jay Lake's blog posts on his experience with terminal cancer . (An index to early entries is here . See also: "A brief user’s guide to this blog" .) While Jay refers to these posts as "cancer blogging", which is entirely accurate, at some point I began to think of them by another name, conflating them with the title of a book by Audre Lorde: The Cancer Journals . The word journal also evokes the word journey , and ...