![\"\"](\"http:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/mike-resnick.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI was deeply saddened this week to read of the death of Mike Resnick, one of the true giants of contemporary science fiction.\u00a0 Mike has been battling serious illness for some time, so the news did not come as a complete surprise… but it came too soon, too soon, and our field and our community will be the poorer for his absence.<\/p>\n
I don’t recall when I first met Mike, but it was a long, long time ago, back in the 1970s when both of us were still living in Chicago.\u00a0 I was a young writer and he was a somewhat older, somewhat more established writer.\u00a0 There were a lot of young writers in the Chicago area in those days, along with three more seasoned pros, Gene Wolfe, Algis Budrys, and Mike.\u00a0\u00a0 What impressed me at the time… and still impresses me, all these years later… was how willing all three of them were to offer their advice, encouragements, and help to aspiring neo-pros like me.\u00a0\u00a0 Each of them in his own way epitomized what this genre and this community were all about back then.\u00a0 Paying forward, in Heinlein’s phrase.<\/p>\n
And no one paid it forward more than Mike Resnick.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He was fine writer, and a prolific one, as all his Hugo and Nebula nods will testify.\u00a0 After they started giving out those little rocket pins for Hugo nominations, Resnick would wear them on his shirt like medals: pointed up for a story that won, down for a story that lost.\u00a0 That always charmed me.\u00a0 Mike won the Hugo five times; once for novella, once for novelette, thrice for short story\u00a0 (like me, he never won the big one, Best Novel).\u00a0\u00a0 He lost a lot more (we had that in common as well).\u00a0\u00a0 He took that in stride, with a shrug and a smile, in the true spirit of a Hugo Loser.<\/p>\n
He never won for Best Editor either, and as best I recall he was nominated only once, under unfortunate circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0 That was a pity.\u00a0 He deserved more recognition for his editing.\u00a0\u00a0 He edited something like forty anthologies, I believe, and he always made a point to fill them with a lot of young aspiring writers, new names and no-names making their first or second or fifth professional sale.\u00a0 I can’t say how many careers he helped launch, but it was a lot.\u00a0 In modern times, only Gardner Dozois was more assiduous in searching out new talent. \u00a0 Mike called his discoveries his “writer babies” and they called him their “writer daddy,” and many a time I would see him\u00a0 in the lobby of a con hotel, with a dozen of his literary children sitting around his feet as he shared his wisdom with them… along with a funny story and ribald anecdote or two.<\/p>\n
His last great act as an editor was the founding of GALAXY’S EDGE, a new SF magazine that he launched… in an act of madness that was all Mike… at the time when the old magazines were struggling to survive. \u00a0 GALAXY’S EDGE always featured a lot of new writers too, and Mike paid them decent rates… a feat he accomplished by twisting the arms of old coots like me to give him reprints for pennies, to free up more money for the newcomers.\u00a0 (Lots of us old coots were glad to do it.\u00a0 Like Mike, we believe in paying forward).\u00a0 I hope and trust that GALAXY’S EDGE will keep going strong, as a lasting testament to his legacy.<\/p>\n
These days, all too often, I meet writers who come to conventions only to promote themselves and their books.\u00a0\u00a0 They do their panels, and you bump into them at the SFWA Suite, but nowhere else.\u00a0\u00a0 Not Mike.\u00a0 Mike Resnick was fannish to the bone.\u00a0\u00a0 You’d find him at publisher’s parties and the SFWA suite, sure, but he’d also pop up at bid parties, in the bar, in the con suite.\u00a0 He made more than one Hugo Loser party, both before and after the days I was running it.\u00a0 You’d see him in the dealer’s room, at the art show, at the masquerade… his Chun the Unavoidable costume, from Jack Vance’s DYING EARTH, was a classic.\u00a0\u00a0 When he appeared on panels, he was funny, sharp, irascible, irreverent, always entertaining… and he would do entire panels without once plugging his own new book, <\/em>a trick more program participants should learn.\u00a0 The place you’d find him most often at worldcon was the CFG suite, the redoubt of the Cincinnati Fan Group.\u00a0 He was the professional’s professional, sure, but Mike was also the fan’s fan.\u00a0\u00a0 For some writers conventions are for selling, selling, selling… for Mike, they were more about giving, giving, giving.\u00a0\u00a0 And having fun.\u00a0\u00a0 That too.\u00a0\u00a0 Mike always seemed to be smiling or laughing.\u00a0\u00a0 He loved science fiction, fantasy, fandom, writing, reading, cons… and he shared his passion with everyone around him.<\/p>\n Science fiction has lost a fine writer, a unique voice, a magnificent mentor… and a profoundly good and decent man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was deeply saddened this week to read of the death of Mike Resnick, one of the true giants of contemporary science fiction.\u00a0 Mike has been battling serious illness for some time, so the news did not come as a complete surprise… but it came too soon, too soon, and our field and our community […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,89,39,58,40],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5999"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6014,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999\/revisions\/6014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}