My interactions with Craig Hinton were fairly minor compared to some. When I lived in Britain for two years in the mid-to-late nineties, I’d see him at Tavern and would very rarely share a table with him there and or at the Crap Italian on Goodge Street. I remember the first time I met him, Paul Cornell or Peter Ware was introducing me to people and I was introduced to Craig. I told him how much I enjoyed Millennial Rites, which was (and still is) one of my favourite Missing Adventure novels. I remember, with self-deprecating panache, that he refused to believe that I actually liked it.

My best memory of Craig from that time was meeting up with then DWM reviewer Dave Owen, who was visiting London for a couple of days. Craig was there along with Gary Gillatt (then editor of DWM), Neil Corry, Gareth Roberts and a few others. Craig, who had left DWM under something of a cloud a year or two earlier, was remonstrating Dave for something he had written in Shelf Life. “Owen,” he said, (I remember how he used his last name like they were in Public School together), “In my day I would never have said something like you did…”

I can still picture that moment—though probably slightly moth-eaten by the drunken haze it happened within—of Craig telling the man who replaced him how he would have written a review whilst sitting across from the man who dismissed him. It summed up everything that delighted and perplexed me about Craig Hinton: the formidable—often wonderful—queeny bitchiness that was seemingly able to stand up to anyone or anything.

What I also liked about Craig back then was that he was one of those rare British fans of the mid-to-late-1990s not afraid to admit to being, and enjoy being, a Doctor Who fan. Back at that time ‘between the wars’ in the Taverning culture, it was almost de rigeur to be almost embarrassed about it. Geez, read many actual published Doctor Who books back then and you can see that more clearly than you might think. But as his Doctor Who fiction indicated, Craig loved Doctor Who. Loved it.

I remember that enthusiasm well. At my first or second Gallifrey convention, I was standing outside the Airtel Plaza…doing what I don’t remember. Craig was out there, smoking (as he tended to do). He came over and started talking to me. When I think about that now, it was a little odd—we knew each other in passing, as a friend of friends like Dave and Andy Lane. Mostly I’d wave at him at the bar. But this day, he came over and started talking. I told him was looking forward to reading Quantum Archangel when it came out.

“I have the most incredible idea for a Doctor Who novel” he said. “I was up late watching American infomercials and I saw these people with face lifts and I thought…plastic surgery! Autons! In California!” I can’t remember if he had talked to Justin Richards at that con, but I was pleased to hear about Synthespians when it was commissioned. Just as I was pleased to hear he was going to be a fellow reviewer in Shaun Lyon’s Back to the Vortex sequel, Second Flight.

I don’t pretend to have known Craig Hinton well. For me over the past decade or so he was one of those fixtures within fandom that has turned out to be not as permanent as I once believed. Craig was one of those larger-than-life people that makes Doctor Who fandom so wonderful and fascinating. I still can’t believe that he’s gone even now.

OG’s Forum has a thread devoted to remembering Craig Hinton.