Locus, April 2013
Page 21
Dan and I did many readings together over the years, each of us acting as audience member when the other was on stage. Now, of course, there will never be another such paired performance. But I know that whenever I get up to read aloud again, I’ll still see him sitting in the audience, grinning and anticipating the fine dinner and conversation to follow. The world is a poorer place without Dan Pearlman, but he leaves behind so many indelible memories to treasure.
–Paul Di Filippo
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Author, editor, and fan RICHARD E. GEIS, 85, died February 4, 2013 in Portland OR.
Richard Erwin Geis was born July 19, 1927 in Portland OR. Geis and his publications were nominated for more than 30 Hugo Awards, and received 13: he won for Best Fan Writer in 1970, ’74, ’75, ’76. ’77, ’81, and ’82; Science Fiction Review won for Best Fanzine in 1969, ’70, ’77, and ’79; and The Alien Critic won for Best Amateur Magazine in 1974 and ’75. He edited or made major contributions to other fanzines and semi-prozines, notably Psychotic and his online fanzine Taboo Opinions.
Richard E. Geis (1950s)
As an author, his first story sale was ‘‘Flight Game’’ in Adam (1959). With Elton T. Elliott he wrote near-future thrillers The Sword of Allah (1984), The Burnt Lands (1985), The Master File (1986), and The Einstein Legacy (1987). The majority of his output was pornographic fiction, with over 100 books published, only a few with SF or fantasy elements, including The Sex Machine (1967), The Endless Orgy (1968), Raw Meat (1969), The Arena Women (1972), and A Girl Possessed (1973), the latter two under the name Peggy Swenson. He also self-published chapbooks Canned Meat (1978), Star Whores (1980), and The Corporation Strikes Back (1981).
RICHARD E. GEIS: AN APPRECIATION by Elton Elliott
I first met Dick Geis in 1975 (he never went by his formal name of Richard). I called him up and mentioned that I headed up a college science fiction fan club and asked if several of us (including one of my college professors) could visit him. He graciously agreed and so began a nearly 40 year friendship.
Born and raised in Portland, and a graduate of Benson Tech High School, Dick spent several decades in the Los Angeles area where he wrote a good deal of his novels and short stories, many of them erotic in nature, although they for the most part were far tamer than much of what is published under that category today.
By the time I met him I knew he had written numerous erotic novels but we never talked much about his past, other than that he mentioned that he was prosecuted by the government for obscenity at one point. The jury trial was in Iowa and he was found innocent.
For ten years I wrote a news, and later, an opinion column for his Hugo Award winning fanzine, Science Fiction Review. We collaborated on four near-future thrillers for Ballantine Books under their Fawcett Gold Medal imprint. I would come up with a concept and some characters and we would hash out a chapter-by-chapter outline and then he would write a draft which I would edit. He did all of the writing in the first three books (The Sword of Allah, The Burnt Lands, and The Master File), but by the fourth book, The Einstein Legacy, he was in a great deal of pain, and I wrote about half of the first draft and did a complete edit and final draft.
But what I will remember the most about our friendship was the numerous weekly phone calls and monthly trips up to his place to chat (mostly about politics and sports), eat grilled cheese sandwiches which his gracious wife, co-editor, and proofreader Paulette Minare made for us, and play several games of chess.
He liked watching sports and while he could still walk we used to go and watch soccer, baseball, and basketball games. Politics/Economics was another hobby and he was a died-in-the-wool conspiracy buff. His Libertarian sensibilities were offended by the moneyed elite and by what he perceived as their vast influence and control over society and their enthusiasm for war and the profits that it generated.
He had an ambivalent and arms-length relationship with fandom. A noted recluse he had few friends; he preferred most people at some distance. I did convince him to go to two Orycons (Oregon’s annual science fiction convention) in the early 1980s; but profoundly shy and embarrassed by slight motor skill difficulties caused by cerebral palsy, he found the personal attention and adulation he encountered highly uncomfortable and refused to go to any more.
Beset by continuing medical ailments he quit publishing Science Fiction Review in the mid-1980s. He stopped writing stories and opinion pieces by the middle of the last decade. At the end of his life he was almost entirely bed-ridden; he enjoyed watching golf (his favorites golfers were Fred Couples and Tiger Woods), he told me he found its slow pace soothing.
Toward the last couple years of his life he declined all personal visits, but we talked frequently on the phone, mostly about science and technology, occasionally about economics (where the debt bubble he had been predicting for 30 years finally happened, much to his satisfaction – not that he enjoyed the deprivation it caused, but he did like being proven prescient). A lifelong atheist he still enjoyed talking about religious matters up until the end, which came upon him suddenly. By last November he went into a rest home and less than three months later he passed away.
Through his fan writing, editing, and publishing he influenced the field of science fiction. At its height his Science Fiction Review was the Tonight Show of science fiction: it was a place where young writers, critics, and editors wrote material in an effort to get noticed. And Dick in his curmudgeonly way presided over it all.
As for me: he taught me a lot about writing and editing, but it’s our chats, whether on the phone or in person, that I’ll miss. And as I write this I note that Tiger Woods is winning another golf tournament. Dick would be happy.
–Elton Elliott
Obituaries continue after ad.
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Writer and editor DAVID B. SILVA, 62, died in early March, 2013.
David Beecher Silva was born 1950 and is best known for editing influential magazine The Horror Show, which ran from 1982-1991 and published early work by major writers including Poppy Z. Brite and Bentley Little. Silva won a World Fantasy Award in 1988 in the special, non-professional category for his work on the magazine. He also edited anthologies, including Post Mortem: New Tales of Ghostly Horror (1989) and Dead End: City Limits (1991), both with Paul F. Olson, as well as books collecting the best work from The Horror Show. From 1997-2002 he and Olson co-edited industry newsletter Hellnotes, for horror professionals and fans. In 2004, the newsletter was revived as a website, where it continues to run at
Silva began publishing short fiction in 1981, and ‘‘The Calling’’ (1990) won a Bram Stoker Award. Several of his other stories were Stoker finalists, and collection Through Shattered Glass (2001) won an International Horror Guild Award; more stories were collected in Little White Book of Lies (2005) and The Shadows of Kingston Mills (2009). His standalone novels include Child of Darkness (1986), Come Thirteen (1988), The Presence (1994), The Disappeared (1995), All the Lonely People (2003). The Family series, written with Kevin McCarthy, includes Special Effects (2001) and Into the Darkness (2002). He lived in Las Vegas NV.
REMEMBERING DAVID B. SILVA by Paul F. Olson
In the end, we came full circle.
My last correspondence with David B. Silva was very much like our first. Back then, in the early winter of 1983, he had read a story I submitted to his groundbreaking magazine, The Horror Show, which was not terribly groundbreaking yet, to be honest, having just gotten started with one extremely primitive tabloid-style issue. He said some nice things about the story, offered a few suggestions, and politely declined to publish it. The last time we wrote, just a few weeks ago now, he had finished reading my most recent tale. After a few complimentary remarks, he proceeded to list a number of typos he’d found hidden in the text.
We ended our relationship just like it began: me the writer seeking approval, him the astute and helpful editor.
Of course, I didn’t know it was the end then.
> We never do know, do we?
The news that broke on March 13, that Dave had died at the age of 62, left me reeling, a piece of my heart torn out, gone forever. For while Dave and I began and ended with an editor-writer relationship, there was so much more in between. The abridged version goes like this: We became good friends. I visited him in northern California. He visited me in Chicago. We traveled together to several World Fantasy Conventions, including one memorable road trip to Nashville, where we took turns sleeping in the back of my pickup. He patiently guided me, as he had so many others, as I launched my magazine, Horrorstruck. We edited an anthology together. He became the godfather of my children. We edited a second anthology. I shared the pain of his parents’ deaths. We created the Hellnotes newsletter and edited it side by side for the first five years. We talked incessantly about horror, about writing, about creativity, about technology, about … you name it. We shared our creative struggles. We built a website. We planned a long science fiction/horror book that eventually became the outline for a trilogy, before we finally gave up and stuffed the crazy concept safely into a file drawer where it belonged.
There’s little I can say about Dave’s impact on the horror field that hasn’t already been said. Twenty years after The Horror Show ceased publication people still talk about its wide-ranging influence, the number of careers it launched, Dave’s keen editorial eye and incredible kindness to every writer, artist and fellow publisher who crossed his path. People fondly remember our anthologies and marvel at the way he led Hellnotes from its humble beginnings as a weekly newsletter to one of the most respected news websites in the field. And most of all, people remember Dave’s own writing – the entertaining novels and that vast collection of stories that earned him well-deserved recognition as one of the finest short fiction writers this field has ever known.
He was so damned good at what he did. While editing, he could assess a work faster than anyone I know and fix it with quick, decisive strokes of his pen. He could make a weak tale strong, a strong tale brilliant. His rejections were gentle, insightful, and when he accepted a story he was more excited than the writer whose work he was buying. And his writing. Ah, his writing. When Dave wrote, he held nothing back. He left it all on the page, every last bit of it. He laid open his soul and he pried deep and he shined light into the dark corners of the human condition in ways that only a very few writers are ever able to accomplish.
What I think about most, however, is not Dave’s work. It is his friendship. He was never what you would call an easy friend. He was shy at first, and could be quiet and secretive even after you had known him for years. He was sometimes sulky, occasionally irritable. He was prone to worry, to fear, to self-doubt, to melancholy silences and sullen withdrawals. But he was also incredibly kind and thoughtful, giving, self-sacrificing. As a professional, he would forego his own work to mentor another writer or publisher with creative tips or career advice, or just to offer an encouraging word to pull them up and out of the dumps. As a friend he was precisely the same, ignoring his own problems while he helped you cope with yours.
I am honored to have begun my career under Dave Silva’s expert guidance. I am humbled to have been his collaborator and colleague. I am proud to have been his friend.
In all of those things, he was, quite simply, the best.
–Paul F. Olson
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Editor, author, and fan JAN HOWARD FINDER, 73, died February 26, 2013 of complications resulting from cancer, in an Albany NY hospital. Finder was active in SF fandom and was well known as an expert on J.R.R. Tolkien, organizing the ‘‘First Conference on Middle-earth’’ in 1969, a second conference in 1971, and a third in 2011. He also organized tours of sites related to SF literature, most notably ‘‘Middle-earth’’ tours of New Zealand, where the Lord of the Rings films were made. He was a frequent guest at conventions, fan guest of honor at numerous conventions including 1993 worldcon, ConFrancisco, a co-founder of
Albacon, and served as chair for Albacon in 1996 and the SFRA conference in 2001. He edited fanzine The Spang Blah and anthology Alien Encounters (1982), and wrote short story ‘‘The Grapes of Rath’’.
Finder, known as ‘‘The Wombat’’ to friends, was born March 2, 1939 and grew up in Chicago. He attended Roosevelt University and the University of Chicago, studied academic administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and worked as an education and college guidance counselor with the military until his retirement. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004. Finder is survived by his partner, Lin Daniel.
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EDITORIAL MATTERS
I tried to come up with some good, curmudgeonly remarks à la Charles to celebrate our 45th anniversary issue, but he had a way, didn’t he? (Maybe in a few more years my snark will have accrued sufficiently…) Charles somehow managed to figure it so that we would celebrate our anniversary at least two or three times in the year, between the trial issue date and the first issue, and counting the calendar year, but that math always seemed fuzzy to me. Navigating the waters of print and digital publishing has been a little rough over the past few years, but we’re still holding strong, and glad to have you along for company.
I’m taking off early on deadline day to get on a plane and fly to Orlando for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. It’s one of my favorite trips of the year; I get a few interviews knocked out and check in with authors and editors while I’m at it, and of course there is the pool… Part of it is also simply that it is the first travel for me after World Fantasy Convention, and in the time lapsed the tedium and irritation of flying and con crud have quietly removed themselves from my memories of the previous year’s travel. This year will be a mixed one for cons, since the Nebula Awards Weekend will be local for us in California, but World Fantasy is all the way in Brighton. A long flight from the West Coast.
Francesca Myman, Mark Kelly & Yeong Wang
In other travel news, Francesca, our design editor and onsite HTML-speaker, went to Los Angeles to meet up with Mark Kelly, the Locus Online editor-in-chief; we wanted to be sure there is a backup person to take care of the site in an emergency. It took two full days of training and conversation. In between sessions of discussing the intricacies of the Locus site, she had some lovely meals with Mark and his partner Yeong, and got to tour his significant science fiction library. And apparently there were fish funerals (tank maintenance is harder than you’d think).
Back at Locus HQ, the joys of home ownership flagged this month when we discovered that the big wraparound decks – that allow us some outside space (we’re on a steep hill and there’s not any usable flat areas) and access to the lower floor (stairs on the outside) – have finally hit the point where they just aren’t safe anymore. We were hoping they would last a few more years, but apparently we’ve already used that bit of rope up. We’re going to have to find a big chunk of money to get those fixed, and I’m brainstorming on how to get it done. If you were considering making a donation anytime soon, now would be a great time. We’ll name a stair after you!
HUGO BALLOT
We’re looking forward to seeing the Hugo ballot any minute now (it will be out by the time you’re reading this). It will be an interesting contest for the Big Rocket, as G.R.R.M. calls it. It’s also a little bittersweet for us at Locus, as we’ve been left without a category to compete in since the definition change, and we’ll definitely miss the excitement of getting the announcements and being nominated. And of course, being on the ballot is a great way to spread the word about the magazine to people who haven’t heard of us yet. That said, there are some really wonderful ’zines in sundry shapes, sizes, and media out there that deserve recognition. Best of luck to everyone who is nominated, and hope to see you all in San Antonio.
Editorial Matters continues after ad.
LOCUS AWARDS
The deadline for the Locus Awards is only a few weeks away, April 15th –
Tax Day – and I hope you’ve taken a few minutes to go to the online poll and let us know what you think. Vote now if you haven’t already! It is at
The awards will be announced this June in Seattle WA at the Locus Awards weekend. If you’ve never been to the Locus Awards, now is the time. We’ll have readings, an autograph session, books for sale, a couple of panels, the banquet, and of course the annual Hawai’ian shirt contest (with prizes). Don’t miss the chance to see Seattle in June, visit the EMP Museum and see the Icons of SF exhibit as well and the new ‘‘Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic’’ exhibit that opens in April, and be charmed by the toastmaster grace and humor of Connie Willis during the awards banquet. The price is currently $40 for a ticket, going up to $50 on May 1. We’d love to see you there with your Hawai’ian shirt on.
NEXT ISSUE
In our next issue we have plans for interviews with Tim Powers and Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, as well as the Hugo Ballot, ICFA coverage, even more awards (Writers of the Future, Philip K. Dick, Dell Magazines, SF Hall of Fame), and all the usual news and reviews. Until then…
–Liza Groen Trombi
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