It ’s actually unimaginable to sum up up the huge donation to musical style publication of David G. Hartwell , who died today allot to Locus . He discovered countless slap-up authors and industriousness professionals , andhe redact Frank Herbert ’s Children of Dune and Gene Wolfe ’s Book of the New Sun . Hartwell is simply irreplaceable .
Many people recognized Hartwell as a elderly editor program at Tor , as the editor or co - editor of multitudinous anthology including a long - carry twelvemonth ’s Best series , or as the wearer of an interminable successiveness of riotous standoff at conventions . But his contributions to the genre go much deeper than that .
In the 1970s and 1980s , Hartwell run as an editor at Signet , at Berkley / Putnam , and at Pocket Books / Simon & Schuster . In that last task , he was responsible for for the influential Timescape Books imprint , and also for starting the Pocket Books Star Trek novel serial publication . The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction notesthat in improver to Book of the New Sun , Hartwell put out musical genre - bust playscript by Gregory Benford , Michael Bishop and Philip K. Dick , and it was “ among the most intelligently edited series of forward-looking sf titles . ” Hartwellalso published Mirrorshades , Bruce Sterling ’s defining anthology of Cyberpunk stories .
From 1984 until now , Hartwell worked at Tor Books , where he has issue more outstanding novels than I can count . And yes , he also put out a ton of anthologies , many of which merit a permanent berth on any book - lover ’s ledge . His anthologies about the revitalisation ofhard science fictionandspace opera , which he co - edit with his then - married woman Kathryn Cramer , not only identify significant trends , but crystalized and shaped them as well .
Hartwell also published a literary magazine publisher , The Little Magazine , from 1965 - 1988 , and he help to find the New York Review of Science Fiction . He avail to publish some of the most challenging , literary books , include authors like Molly Gloss , whoonce praisedhis “ literary taste in scientific discipline fable . ” ButHartwell always insistedthat he did n’t need scientific discipline fiction to be more like literary fabrication — he just want it to be “ better written , ” which is “ a dissimilar matter . ”
As his friend , the author Michael Swanwick , wrote a few years ago :
Almost all editors start as writers , whether successfully or not — and almost all writers begin by reading a big work of fiction and thinking , “ I could write good than this ! ” David Hartwell ’s moment on the road to Damascus hail when he read a bad science fable novel and thought , “ I could show the writer how to set this ! ”
Hartwell also chaired the plank of directors of the World Fantasy Convention and co - administered the Philip K. Dick Award ( with Gordon Van Gelder . ) And as a scholar of the account of science fiction and fantasy , Hartwell had few equals . He was one of those people who was always illuminating to listen to , whether in the dealer ’s room of a convention or on a control board .
He was also a Scripture reviewer for Crawdaddy , the medicine magazine that Paul Williams , the primer - break rock critic and Philip K. Dick scholar , published in the sixties .
You could fill one hell of a bookcase with account book that David G. Hartwell put together , or made better through his ministrations . And he was , as he told Locus , always an optimist about science fiction in spite of all the doomsaying .
Here ’s Hartwell , from the origination toThe Science Fiction Century , one of his many anthologies :
Science fiction is a literature for people who esteem knowledge and who hope to understand how thing work in the worldly concern and in the universe . In scientific discipline fiction , knowledge is power and power is technology and technology is good and useful in improving the human condition . It is , by denotation , a lit of authorisation . The moral of the music genre megatext , that trunk of literature that in aggregate embodies the received plots , figure , picture , specialised diction and platitude , is that one can puzzle out job through the app of knowledge of science and technology . By further extension service , the SF megatext is an allegory of faith in science .
David G. Hartwell restored our religious belief in the major power of skill fiction . He ’ll be missed .
Top trope : The Science Fiction Century . Bottom image : Cory Doctorow , via BoingBoing
connect with the author at[email protected ] .
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