David G. Hartwell 1941-2016

Locus obit. What editors do may not be as visible as what writers write, but David G. Hartwell was integral to SF for decades.

He's apparently not dead yet, Patrick jumped the gun, but they'll probably turn off life support during the day. Fuck.

Agreed. I had just picked up "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF" just a few weeks ago. I can definitely appreciate someone who can pull together a good quality anthology. :(

Wow, this is a sad shock. This man was instrumental in starting many celebrated careers - Ellen Kushner, Guy Kay....he was behind World Fantasy Convention, and also immersed in the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. He loved the field, went out of his way to wear outrageously ghastly neck ties, and I recall many a late night reprise of 'Teen Angel' sung at WFC in the wee hours of the morning at parties at WFC, the most notable of which was shut down by the Tucson police for the noise.

The snapshot memory is a classic of the tradition - Dave Hartwell and somebody with a guitar, standing on the hotel bed, David with both arms raised, while the entire room belted out the final verse - and in come the cops.

A very big tall one, and a short red head partner - with the statement, "We don't know what time it is where you folks come from, but here in Tucson it's past 2 in the morning and folks are trying to sleep.:

Funny how things come round: years later I met the tall cop - and he was unmistakably familiar - but it took awhile to put it together. He recalled the moment, a decade after, and when WFC came back to Phoenix, and I was guest artist there, I had the chance to re-intruduce David to the officer who'd put the kabosh on the singing - I never imagined anyone could blush that red. I wish I had a picture.

So sorry to hear this icon of the field is so suddenly silenced. I can't quite get a handle on it.

Goddamn it. Now that was a guy who understood the importance of short fiction, especially in the speculative fiction genres - a dying breed. I own his Dark Descent and World Treasury of Science Fiction (and man, I was a happy guy the day I saw Dark Descent on sale at my local Half Price Books for three bucks, let me tell ya), and have checked out my library's copy of The Science Fiction Century on more than one occasion. A big loss.

>4 JannyWurts: No, this is sending shockwaves through US fandom and prodom right now. And the tremor is felt also here in Europe. He was one of the pillars.

>4 JannyWurts:

Great anecdote(s), thanks for sharing. I don't recognise the name, which is typical of my unfamiliarity with editors and other non-writers generally. Appreciate the opportunity here to begin remedying that gap in my appreciation.

What >7 elenchus: said!

Issue 330 of The New York Review of Science Fiction, Hartwell's journal of SFF criticism and history, is just out. It's a Hartwell retrospective, and it's available as a free ebook at Weightless Books. The photos include a gallery of selected Hartwell neckties.

>9 dukedom_enough: That's amazing. Thank you for the link!

>10 MyriadBooks: I've only read a bit so far, but some of the pieces are quite good. Up front, there's a list of 75 selected books he edited. SF would be very different without these titles (of course, absent Hartwell there'd have been another editor for many of these books). When Hartwell was guest of honor at Readercon, I was working on the Souvenir Book and tried to find someone to compile something like this, but couldn't find a source. The full list would be much longer.

NYRSF said on Twitter that they've put up a corrected version of Issue 330 - the first one had something wrong with the table of contents. FYI.