Jack L. Chalker, 60; Fantasy and Science-Fiction Writer

Jack L. Chalker, who wrote more than 60 science-fiction and fantasy novels, died of kidney failure Friday at a hospital in Baltimore. He was 60.

Chalker won numerous awards during a career that began in his early teens with a literary magazine, Mirage, that he produced on a mimeograph machine and assembled with friends on the dining-room table of his family’s home.

The magazine earned Chalker, then 14, a nomination for the Hugo Award, the genre’s highest honor, given by the World Science Fiction Society. He was nominated for three more Hugos during his career.

“He was one of the greats in our field,” said Catherine Asaro, president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Inc. “He always had something provocative to say, his creativity in imagining different universes.”

Chalker’s 1977 novel “Midnight at the Well of Souls,” about a walking, talking plant with brains in its feet, sold hundreds of thousands of copies, said his wife, Eva C. Whitley.

Growing up in the Howard Park neighborhood of Baltimore, Chalker was 13 when he took a bus to Washington for his first science-fiction club meeting, and he was hooked.

Chalker graduated from what is now Towson University and earned a master’s degree in liberal arts from Johns Hopkins University. He served in the Maryland Air National Guard as an information officer in the 1960s and taught social studies at Baltimore high schools for a dozen years before leaving in 1978 to spend more time writing.

Besides science fiction, a favorite interest of Chalker’s was the work of writer H.P. Lovecraft. Chalker wrote several books on Lovecraft’s weird fiction. Chalker also owned a publishing firm, Mirage Press.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons.