John Taylor, 77, died peacefully at his home on November 1.  John came into this world on June 16, 1947, a date he took great delight in because James Joyce's great novel Ulysses took place on that date.  John spent his early years in Jamestown, New York, and then moved with his family to Minneapolis in 1959.  In 1965, he received a National Merit Scholarship to attend Macalester College in St. Paul, from which he graduated in 1969 with a degree in English, and then attended Indiana University, where he earned a Masters and PhD degree in English Language studies.  After graduate school, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for seven years and then accepted a position at South Dakota State University in 1980.  At SDSU, he taught English Language courses (He was a one-person Linguistics Department), composition, and science fiction.  John's students either really loved him or really hated him, though it seems more students loved him than hated him since students voted him the Graduate Studies Program Teacher of the Year in 2002-2003 and the College of Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year in 2004-2005.

Anyone who knew John, knew he loved to read.  In high school, his friends joked that John amused himself reading the dictionary (his beloved Funk and Wagnalls). As a child, he enjoyed reading comic books, and as a teenager, he developed a life-long interest in science fiction.  John often attended Minneapolis' yearly Mini Con, and some years he participated in programming, as well.  Aside from reading, John loved communing with nature (Thoreau was his hero), and after reading Stalking the Wild Asparagus, he would often search out wild edible foods, and then treat his family to such dishes as lily pod soup and purslane salad.  When he wasn't reading, John enjoyed playing and listening to music, swimming, traveling, and interacting with animals.  He was a dog lover and a bird watcher.

John is survived by his wife of fifty-six years, Lynnette, his three children, Patrick, Thomas, and Benjamin, his two daughters-in-law, Karen and Vee, and his two granddaughters, Amara and Aliya.

Memorials may be given to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Brookings or the Brookings Regional Humane Society.