Born in Lewes, East Sussex, Nicholson harboured writing ambitions from a young age, and after attending Christ College, Cambridge he worked at the BBC and wrote the fantasy novel trilogy Wind on Fire.
"We won't ever forget," wrote the fantasy author Neil Gaiman, while musician Moby saluted "one of the great writers and thinkers and visionaries of our era".
"I can't allow myself to be crushed," Ullmann says resolutely, "that she didn't write the romantic fantasy of me that I hoped she'd write".
Maybe you write the tamer fantasy, make it more polished, and you win the Pulitzer Prize.
I managed to land a steady freelance writing gig with Chicago Tribune's RedEye edition writing the Dr Fantasy sports column and random news features, but my finances were hardly the stuff of fantasy.
The next day I wrote the female fantasy part.
After I wrote the male fantasy first stanza, I was very tempted to leave it at that.
In 2007, James Mann wrote "The China Fantasy," a short book arguing that Western elites had misrepresented the benefits of engagement with China, and that prosperity and capitalism would not necessarily bring democracy to the country.
Lucy Hounsom, whose debut novel, Starborn is published this month, initially wrote the epic fantasy with a male lead, before realising the story worked better with a heroine at its heart.
Separately, Palin made a series of ground-breaking travel documentaries, Cleese starred in films and Fawlty Towers, Jones co-wrote the hit fantasy film Labyrinth and the comedy series Ripping Yarns, and Gilliam became a Hollywood film director.
