George Scithers, founding editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, has died. Those whose science fiction reading habit started after his tenure there may know little about him (especially since his reputation has been eclipsed by subsequent Asimov’s editors like Shawna McCarthy and Gardner Dozois), but many writers working in the field today remember two particular things about him:
- His love of short, 1-2 page pun stories (sometimes called “Feghoots,” after Reginald Bretnor’s “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot” series of stories, of which Scithers published many).
- His use of an army of editorial assistants to personally comment on every rejection and sign his name. So an aspiring writer submitting to Asimov’s wouldn’t just get back a form rejection letter, they’d get back a slightly personalized form rejection letter with a tiny scribbled comment like “Needs work” or “Getting better,” with Scither’s name scrawled at the end.
Strangely, this combination may have done more to encourage new science fiction writers than anyone else of that era. You’d read one of those pun stories and go “That’s terrible! I could write a better story than that!” (And, eventually, you could.) Plus, once you got back your rejection, you’d notice the personalization and go “Ah-ha! A personal rejection slip! I’m getting close! Any day now I’ll sell a story!” Of such small, innocuous frauds were many a notable career launched.
The puns aside, Scither’s wasn’t a bad editor, and he won two Hugos at Asimov’s (to go along with two for editing his fanzine Amra). I never sold anything to him (being all of 17, with a single non-fiction sale to The Space Gamer under my belt, when he left the magazine probably had something to do with that), but he did well enough that the magazine survived, and I made my first fiction sale to Gardner Dozois in 1990.
RIP