Jean-Louis Trudel, 1967-2025
It is with great sadness that we announce that we have lost one of our own.
Jean-Louis Trudel, one of the pillars of the Canadian literary community of imaginative literature, died Nov. 17 in Vilnius, Lithuania. He was in Lithuania for the month of November as a writer in residence. He was 58 years old.
Jean-Louis was a science fiction writer, a critic, a translator, a historian, and a convention organizer. He had been involved with con organizing and the Aurora Awards since the late 1980s. For many, many years Jean-Louis was a CSFFA (Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association) board member and our liaison with Congrès Boréal (as their secretary) and the Quebec Francophone community.
When he arrived at the Winnipeg Worldcon (1994) he found that nothing had been arranged by the convention committee to hold that year’s Aurora Awards’ ceremony. Jean-Louis stepped in and arranged for a location where the Aurora Awards ceremony could happen. More recently, Jean-Louis attended the Worldcon in Chicago in 2022 where he promoted a French bid for Worldcon to happen in Nice, France.
Editions ActuSF, his French publisher, described Jean-Louis as “A leading figure in science fiction across the Atlantic (who) worked as a critic, historian, and translator.” They also say that he served as vice-president, and, later, president of SF Canada, the Canadian science fiction writers’ association.
Editions ActuSF lists among his notable novels The Revenant of Fomalhaut; Tomorrow, the Stars; Supremacy; The Transfigured of Centauri; and The Messenger of Storms.
Primarily an author of short stories, Jean-Louis’s stories were published over five decades, 1984-2025. He held degrees in physics, astronomy, and the history and philosophy of science. Since 1994, he has authored (alone or in collaboration with Yves Meynard as Laurent McAllister) three science fiction novels published in France, four fiction collections, and twenty-six young adult books published in Canada.
Jean-Louis received literary distinctions, including the Grand Prix de la Science-Fiction et du Fantastique québécois in 2001. He won Prix Aurora Awards in the fan categories in 1994 and 1996. He was recognized in 1994 for Promotion of Canadian SF and in 1996 for SFSF Boréal et Prix Boréal. In 2021 Jean-Louis was inducted into the CSFFA Hall of Fame.
Recently, in a discussion about Canadian citizenship Jean-Louis told the CSFFA board, “I identify as a Franco-Ontarian (Canadian) with Métis ancestry, born in Toronto. My father was Franco-Manitoban, and my grandfather was born in Regina in the 19th century, back when it was still in the Northwest Territories. My mother is an immigrant from France. I now live in Québec. There’s a bit of Scots in the family tree as well.
“On the whole, I think I cover the full Canadian gamut. And, yes, via the Métis branch, my ancestors in this land go back thousands of years.”
To see a list of Jean-Louis’s stories, longer fiction, and non-fiction, go to https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?581.