The American science-fiction author William Sleator, who has died unexpectedly aged 66, wrote novels for children and young adults that varied between gross-out funny and deep melancholy. He had a serious appreciation for science and a keen, somewhat cynical, interest in family dynamics. Working not just in science fiction, but also in fantasy and horror, he often used dystopian settings to tackle important social issues. He frequently predicated his tales upon unusual scientific phenomena, although his work was best known for its headlong plotting and oddball characters, including some very eccentric aliens.
Sleator's first publication of note was The Angry Moon (1970), a picture book based on a legend of the Tlinglit people in the Pacific northwest of the US. The Angry Moon, which was illustrated by Blair Lent, was chosen as a Caldecott honour book by the Association for Library Service to Children, but Sleator soon turned to longer fiction.
House of Stairs (1974), one of the first great dystopian novels for young adults, concerns a group of deeply troubled orphans who awake to find themselves imprisoned in a huge structure based on the famous MC Escher print of the same name, which consists of nothing but staircases that they must constantly climb up and down in search of food. Eventually they discover that they are part of a secret government psychological conditioning program and that, rather than being expected to work together, they are being trained to treat each other with cruelty. The Young Adult Library Services Association named House of Stairs as one of its 100 best books for young adults.
Sleator's The Green Futures of Tycho (1981) plays with time-travel paradoxes in a startling and creative way, allowing a boy to travel into the future and meet, and disapprove of, himself as an adult. The eponymous protagonist borrows his name from Sleator's younger brother; with its use of sibling rivalry as a plot device, it is an example of the autobiographical thread that runs through much of the author's fiction.
In Interstellar Pig (1984), perhaps Sleator's most popular novel, a boy with neglectful parents is spending a boring summer at the family's beach house when he becomes involved with a trio of eccentric and intensely compelling neighbours who love to play the board game of the book's title. They invite him to join in the game, which is flattering, but he eventually discovers that they are hostile aliens and that the game is actually being played for control of the universe. At once terrifying and wildly funny, it was followed by a successful sequel, Parasite Pig (2002).
Born in Havre de Grace, Maryland, William Warner Sleator III, or Billy as he was known to friends and family throughout his life, grew up in the suburb of University City, Missouri. His father, William, was a physiology professor and his mother, Esther Kaplan Sleator, was a noted paediatrician who researched attention deficit disorder.
Sleator attended University City high school, where he composed scores for plays, and then Harvard University, where he was miserable, but received a degree in English in 1967. Moving to England for a year to study musical composition, Sleator, a fine pianist, at first supported himself by playing for ballet schools. Upon his return to the US, he worked as a rehearsal pianist for the Boston Ballet until 1983. He then became a full-time writer.
Sleator's parents, intensely intellectual, involved in the St Louis arts community and strongly supportive of Sleator's early artistic attempts in both writing and music, were nonetheless somewhat hands-off when it came to their children. This is a theme that runs through many of his books, particularly Interstellar Pig and the highly autobiographical collection of short stories Oddballs (1993). His other significant novels include his first, Blackbriar (1972), Singularity (1985), The Boy Who Reversed Himself (1986), The Duplicate (1988), Strange Attractors (1990), The Boxes (1998) and The Last Universe (2005). His final novel, The Phantom Limb, written with Ann Monticone, is due to be published next month.
In his later years, Sleator alternated his time between the small village of Bua Chet, in Thailand, and Boston, in Massachusetts. He was predeceased by his mother, his sister, Vicky; and two partners, Paul Peter Rhode, in 1999, and Siang Chitsa-Ard, in 2008. He is survived by his father and his brothers, Tycho and Daniel.