I learned this morning that Locus publisher Charles N. Brown died last night. After seeing him at Worldcon, I’m not completely surprised, but I am very saddened.
In the late 1980′s, as Kris and I started up Pulphouse Publishing, Charles became a friend and he and I spent many, many wonderful hours talking about publishing, about magazine layout, about cash flow, and a ton of other things we both enjoyed, on more than one occasion drinking and talking until the sun came up. During those years Kris and I spent a number of nights sleeping on his very uncomfortable bed in his basement with his collection, and numbers of times I went down during those years to help in the magazine mailing party so Charlie could teach me some tricks of doing that.
A number of years later, as I moved away from publishing and into writing, Charles and I had a number of arguments over dinners and in his living room about the future of the field. I wanted it to open up, be inclusive of all the new stuff, including games and movies and media, but he wanted none of that, instead feeling that holding the line of the literature genre was more important. With these arguments and my working in media books for a while, which he flat stated he thought was worthless to my face, we drifted apart as friends and that saddened me as well.
He helped me and Kris a great deal in building our careers.
He will be missed. A very sad day for literature.
Travel light, Charles. Keep them in line when you get there.
Dean
Hello Dean,
My condolences for your recent loss. I too just lost a longtime friend and so your post hits me on a personal level. Like you and Charles, my friend and I had rather pointed arguments.
Your post made me remember that it’s those memories – the good ones as well as the not-so-good ones that really make one reflect on how much our friends help us grow.
- Michael
Yeah, Charlie once looked me in the eye — kinda — and told me I was writing crap. He wouldn’t even honor any kind of tie-in with the term “novel,” they were always “novelizations,” no matter they were original material.
Took Alan Dean fifty novels before he got a serious review in Locus, and that was a pan he didn’t deserve.
And Charlie held a mean grudge — for years, I didn’t get reviews because I was collaborating with a guy Charlie disliked because my buddy’s ex-girlfriend cried on Charlie’s shoulder.
It was his ‘zine and his right, and he was a big influence in the field, but he wasn’t willing to change as it changed, and I think that marginalized him toward the end.
Maybe one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but one also shouldn’t canonize them undeservedly, either. I’m glad to see you resisted that …
Agree completely, Steve. For a time, as long as Kris and I fit into his thinking about sf, we were welcome and he and I became friends. The moment we went “outside” his limits, he just cut us off. Very sad he was so limited and very, very short-sighted, and I agree he became very marginalized toward the end. Now it will be interesting if his ghost keeps up the crap, or if after some time the magazine expands its reach. My hopes are not high.
Cheers
Dean