Science fiction writer and editor Mike Resnick died this morning a little after midnight according to a post by his daughter Laura Resnick, due to an aggressive lymphoma that followed on the heels of major surgery.
Mike was a friend from way back in the pre-WWW days of the Delphi Wednesday Night Group in the late 1980s, where a bunch of science fiction people (Resnick, Pat Cadigan, Gardner Dozois, myself, Dwight and many others) hung out on a regular basis. I sold Mike one of my earliest stories, “Huddled Masses” for his Alternate Presidents anthology, as well as “Saul’s Diary” for Galaxy’s Edge, and Mike used “Crucifixion Variations” for World’s Science Fiction Story Collection II, my only story ever published in China.
He got involved with science fandom early in life and never left. Mike was one of the last of a dying breed of science fiction’s writing machines, someone who early-on mastered the ability to crank out a prodigious amount of wordage every day. The Kirinyaga stories in the 1980s, set an orbital African primativist tribal “utopia,” was where he really started to make his mark, and he became a regular Hugo and Nebula winner back when that meant something. He edited dozens of anthologies, frequently buying work by new writers, and eventually founding Galaxy’s Edge. He raised prize-winning collies and collected books on Africa. When the Social Justice Warrior mob came for him and Barry Malzberg for the usual stupid reasons he told them to go pound sand.
He was a jovial presence at conventions, and he will be missed.
Tags: Mike Resnick, Obituary, Science Fiction