“Hey, it’s Bob”: A Remembrance of Robert Morales by Eileen Gunn
Robert Morales and I were students together at the Clarion Writers Workshop in Michigan in 1976. He was the youngest person at the workshop that year and quite likely the smartest. A skinny, precocious 18-year-old, he displayed a gleeful, sardonic wit and the ability to skewer a complex situation with a single, surreal, absolutely dead-on comment.
Before Clarion, Bob had been a math prodigy and a prodigious reader. He was deeply interested in the New Wave, with great appreciation for the work of Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas M. Disch, Michael Moorcock, Barry Malzberg, and others. Many of those writers were already his friends.
After Clarion, Bob studied film briefly at the School of the Visual Arts, wrote arts-and-entertainment journalism, and worked at the short-lived SF magazine Cosmos, the Village Voice, and various publications of Time, Inc. As executive editor of Reflex in 1991, he brought in Neil Gaiman as consulting editor and focused on comics, setting Reflex apart from competitors like Spin. After Reflex folded, Bob freelanced for Vibe, doing in-depth interviews with Toni Morrison, Nichelle Nichols, Charles Rangel, and others. With artist Kyle Baker, he created a series of trenchantly witty comics on cultural/political issues. He later served as arts editor of Vibe.
In 2002, Bob and Kyle were invited to create a series for Marvel’s Captain America. The storyline, which originated at Marvel, posited that the serum that turned blonde, blue-eyed Steve Rogers into a WWII superman was tested first on black soldiers: the first Captain America was black, and the success of the second was built on exploitation of the first. Bob defined his task thus: to tell a racially driven story in historically accurate context and make it understandable to both comics and non-comics readers.
Morales and Baker met the challenge. Truth: Red, White & Black (Marvel, 2003) is a ground-breaking work, a science-fictional adventure comic that encompasses – with warmth, humor, and anger – the variety of African-American experience in the mid-twentieth century. It also references the direct influence American eugenics proponents had in the 1930s on Nazi eugenics theories, and the US government’s lengthy history of involuntary experimentation on black people and drafted soldiers. Marvel weathered a firestorm of criticism for making it part of their official continuity, and hired Bob to write the series Captain America: Homeland (2004, Marvel), which deals with international terrorism and disenfranchisement in the US.
The influence that Robert Morales exerted extends far beyond his own written work. Bob had many deep friendships with writers, artists, and musicians – he would call and talk on the phone for hours. Writers who have acknowledged his influence and assistance include Samuel R. Delany, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, and James Patrick Kelly. And me. Bob was deeply suspicious of any club that would let him in, but his network of friends comprise an invisible society that he alone created.
Robert Morales, writer, editor, journalist, died at his home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on April 18, 2013. He was 55.
–Eileen Gunn
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EDITORIAL MATTERS
Tomorrow and tomorrow… It’s been a crazy couple of months, and I feel like things keep getting pushed back more and more. As a result, I’m running behind on interviews, getting them that is. We do them in person as a rule, something I definitely prefer. It allows the interview to go places that it might not otherwise, and it’s a lot easier to put someone at ease if you are there having the conversation in the same room. It does, however, make it tricky to schedule sometimes and we start to run out of inventory. I was just getting to the point where interviews were being done and then run in the next month (not a comfortable place), when I interviewed Nalo Hopkinson, Rudy Rucker, and Neil Gaiman all in a week. All lovely conversations, and makes me feel a little more caught up, though there is still work to be done.
Francesca Myman, Jay Lake, Liza Groen Trombi, Tim Pratt & Heather Shaw, Nancy Schaadt
I met Neil out at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco where he was staying, or at least trying to stay – there was a glitch in the reservation details and only his wife Amanda Palmer’s name was on the room, and she was off doing sound check for her show. Neil and I had sushi and talked, checked with the front desk, hung out in the lobby and talked some more, checked with the front desk, and then took photos in the garden courtyard of the hotel. When I left he was still politely waiting in the lobby, three hours later, for someone to let him into his room. Good to be reminded that those things happen to everyone, even when you have assistants. Possibly even more.
NEBULA AWARDS
The Nebula Awards came to our part of town this year, and will be here again next year, held in San Jose at the Hilton. It was a bit too much of a business hotel, with the bar and the restaurant both sharing open space in the lobby, and lots of hard surfaces to bounce conversations around. It was lacking that Great Space to hang out and see everyone, which can make a con wonderful, and as a result seemed a bit empty at times. There was a good patio outside, which never quite got discovered by the attendees, though it was taken over briefly for the Asimov’s Readers/Anlab Awards presentation. I hope they work with another hotel for next year, but that may not be the case.
Locus design editor Francesca Myman, editorial intern Patrick Wells, and I went down to cover the weekend, with other Locusites visiting on Friday to come out for dinner with Jay Lake and friends, and Saturday to see folks before the awards. On Thursday night, SF in SF, our local reading series, featured Connie Willis and Gene Wolfe reading with Terry Bisson presenting the show. Afterward, Bob and Karen Silverberg invited me to join their dinner with Shahid Mahmud of Arc Manor, which was fun as always though I had one glass of red wine too many and had the headache to prove it the next day. I interviewed Aliette de Bodard, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Steven Gould; did a panel; had great conversations with Connie and Cordelia Willis, Trevor Quachri, Ginjer Buchanan, and more. The Nebula Awards presentation went off without a hitch on Saturday night, improved in great part due to being emceed by the ever-dry Robert Silverberg, though the room was a tight fit for the banquet, and the lighting was awful at best.
I drove the 45 minutes home on Sunday morning. A convention held in your backyard is a funny thing, sometimes better and sometimes worse for being so close to home, but that short ride back was kind of fabulous. We’ll have the full write-up about the weekend, and lots of photos in the July issue, where we have time and space enough to do it right.
THIS ISSUE/NEXT ISSUE MISCELLANY
John Harrington, Francesca Myman
Fran attended the Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition this month and came back with enthusiastic stories of John Harrington’s Gentleman Spacefarer costume (airtight, with working bellows pumping cooled air into the suit; see photo). More and more steampunk events keep popping up around the Bay Area, with the Clockwork Alchemy convention set for the same weekend as Baycon and Fanime. We’ve been trying to run some more regional con stories, but it does depend on layout and timing.
So many People & Publishing notes came in, that for the first time ever, at least in any of our experience, we are running a third page for them. News, awards, cons, everything is happening now and the issue feels very crowded. Rudy Rucker generously offered his own artwork for our cover (a detail of ‘‘On My Home Planet’’) and the interview layout (‘‘Davenport Cliffs’’); thanks for that, Rudy! We’re running our Forthcoming Books list this month through March 2014 (so check it out for upcoming titles). We’ve plans for running the Neil Gaiman interview along with Maria Dahvana Headley in the July issue. Next up for travel, Locus Awards in Seattle! Hope you are coming and we’ll see you there!
–Liza Groen Trombi
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PHOTO LIST
Rudy Rucker (LT)
Sofia Samatar (FM)
Awards (FM)
Neil Gaiman (LT)
Tanith Lee (PC)
Fred Nadis (F/KC)
Darrell Schweitzer (DGH)
Nebula Awards Winners (FM)
Cathy & Arnie Fenner (F)
Rudy Rucker (LT)
Graham Joyce (BG)
Ben Winters (F/DRHW)
Kate Elliott (BG)
Chris Beckett, Ian Stewart (F/RM)
2012 Asimov’s Readers’ & Analog AnLab Awards Winners (LT)
Steven Gould (FM)
Rachel Swirsky (FM)
Joe Haldeman, Naoyuki Katoh (GH)
Tomoki & Etsuko Kodama (GH)
Regina Glei (GH)
Joe Haldeman, Preston Grassmann, Kyoko Ogushi (GH)
Naoyuki Katoh, Tadaomi Sunahara, Yoshikazu Asahina (GH)
Mark Anderson & Ariane Wolfe, Gail Carriger, Thomas Willeford (FM)
Salem Evans, Jude Feldman (FM)
Talia & Michael Dashow (FM)
Deborah Biancotti (F/CT)
Laura Anne Gilman (LT)
Ray Harryhausen (F)
Andrew J. Offutt (F)
Francesca Myman, Jay Lake, Liza Groen Trombi, Tim Pratt & Heather Shaw, Nancy Schaadt (FM)
John Harrington, Francesca Myman (FM)
Sofia Samatar (FM)
Photo Listing: (LT) Liza Groen Trombi, (PC) Peter Coleborn, (F/KC) Kate Connell, (F/RM) ©Rob Monk/SFX magazine, (DGH) David G. Hartwell, (BG) Beth Gwinn, (F/DRHW) Diana R.H. Winters, (GH) Gay Haldeman, (FM) Francesca Myman, (F/CT) Chris Trussler, (F) Furnished.
AD LIST
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MASTHEAD
CHARLES N. BROWN
Founder
(1968-2009)
LIZA GROEN TROMBI
Editor-in-Chief
KIRSTEN GONG-WONG
Managing Editor
MARK R. KELLY
Locus Online Editor-in-Chief
CAROLYN F. CUSHMAN
TIM PRATT
Senior Editors
FRANCESCA MYMAN
Design Editor
HEATHER SHAW
Assistant Editor
PATRICK WELLS
ALORA YOUNG
Editorial Interns
JONATHAN STRAHAN
Reviews Editor
TERRY BISSON
GARDNER DOZOIS
STEFAN DZIEMIANOWICZ
KAREN HABER
RICH HORTON
RUSSELL LETSON
RICHARD A. LUPOFF
ADRIENNE MARTINI
FAREN MILLER
GARY K. WOLFE
Contributing Editors
KAREN BURNHAM
Roundtable Blog Editor
WILLIAM G. CONTENTO
Computer Projects
Locus, The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field (ISSN 0047-4959), is published monthly, at $6.95 per copy, by Locus Publications, 34 Ridgewood Lane, Oakland CA 94611. Please send all mail to: Locus Publications, PO Box 13305, Oakland CA 94661. Telephone (510) 339-9196; (510) 339-9198. FAX (510) 339-9198. E-mail:
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Locus, June 2013 Page 33
