I’m late to report this news as I was out of town when it happened, but the great John Crowley died last week at the age of 83. He was a writer of fantasy and science fiction who utterly transcended the genre.

If I asked you to make a list of the hundred most popular writers today in any genre–or the thousand most popular–I would feel easy saying that Crowley was every bit as good as any of them (and better than all but a few of them). His novel Little, Big was a revelation to me, a big, sprawling, multigenerational family drama written with all the skill and nuance of George Eliot or Charles Dickens, but in a thoroughly original fantasy mode. I can’t remember what reviewer called Little, Big a secret history of America, but the appellation fits: the malevolent demagogue Russell Eigenblick is a scarily accurate portrait of Donald Trump, written almost forty years before Trump rode down his golden escalator like a meteor striking the earth.

There are many wildly popular books today that will slip into oblivion before you know it: I doubt a single person will be reading Dungeon Crawler Carl or Legends and Lattes a hundred years from now. But there is a good chance people will still be reading Little, Big in the year 2126. In any just world, at least, that’s how it should be.

Rest in peace, John Crowley.