I got word today that the first editor to buy one of my stories professionally, and my agent for many years, George H. Scithers, died yesterday at the age of 80.

He was editor of Amazing Stories Magazine back in 1984 when he bought my story, “One Final Dragon.” Several more stories followed, and he took the trouble to give me some good advice along the way.

After he left Amazing, George started Owlswick Literary Agency along with Darrell Schweitzer. They asked me to come on as a client. I remained in their stable until they dissolved a few years ago.

I never had the chance to meet George (came close once, when I had a flight layover in Philadelphia, but it didn’t work out). We communicated by letter at first, then graduated to e-mail. Talked a few times on the phone. He was always gentlemanly, funny, and reassuring.

Beginning as a fan, he was one of the people responsible for the increasing popularity of heroic fantasy, being especially a champion of Robert E. Howard’s work. I was proud to be associated with him.

We never discussed religion, but from some comments he dropped, I believe he was a Christian of some description.

An obituary by Tor editor David Hartwell is here.

His Wikipedia entry is here.

R.I.P.

In this article on Russian censorship of independent publishers, the writer reports:

Two years later he found himself in much more trouble over Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, a heartwarming narrative in which clones of Khrushchev and Stalin enjoy some tender sexual moments together. In fact Blue Lard had been published in 1999 but it was not until 2002 that anybody took offense. Moving Together, a pro-Putin youth movement flushed copies of Sorokin’s works down a giant toilet erected outside the Bolshoi Theater, apparently as part of a battle against “…immorality, cynicism, and the humiliation of our culture.” Sales exploded, reaching a total of 100,000.

. . . [Ad Marginem’s publisher, Alexander Ivanov, said of their arrest over publishing this book,] “We felt danger, but our main sensation was… surprise at the idiocy of the situation, that we had to discuss literary issues with the police. It seemed to me that they themselves were a bit shocked by this investigation.”

(via Books, Inq.)

Mr. Silva is blogging about seeing beauty in life.

The current state of publishing has me thinking about the future.

It’s hard not to these days. Everywhere you look there’s another announcement of the electronic squashing print. I imagine this big trash-can-head robot stomping books into the mud and I have to set down my quill and cry a little into my ink-stained tea mug.

(Imagine people wanting to move to the space station on Mars just to get away from the disturbing technological society we’ve created on Earth. It isn’t so far fetched to consider–the sci-fi writers are all wondering why I’d even bring it up.)