Kevin J. Maroney on David G. Hartwell

There’s a great deal to say about David, and a lot of it doesn’t organize tidily. Anyone who ever visited his office or his houses or his vast stacks of inexpensive paperbacks in a dealers’ room would recognize that his true native environment was the jumble, and I fear that there’s no way to avoid that when talking about him.

David Hartwell worked more jobs simultaneously than any person I’ve ever known: anthologist, editor, publisher, book collector/dealer, and educator, and I’m sure I’m missing some.

I first heard of Hartwell when I was working in a science fiction bookstore (and comics shop) in the 1980s. My impression then was that he was seen as a somewhat ridiculous figure; this would have been in the aftermath of the high-profile failure of David’s Timescape imprint for Pocket Books. Wise heads shook sadly at the idea of building an entire publishing line around works that were, for the most part, sui generis—books such as The Book of the New Sun, The Dragon Waiting, the eponymous Timescape, all brilliant and each as different from the last as could be.

Some of those books were successful: Many years later, David told me with a mix of amusement and frustration of a lunchtime conversation he had with Judy-Lynn del Rey during the Timescape years. She asked him what was selling for him, and he told her “The Book of the New Sun is consistently a best seller” and gave some figures. “You’re lying,” she responded, seriously and immovably, unable to believe that a book that baroque and mysterious could possibly be finding an audience.

But there weren’t enough successes to keep the line going, and by 1985 Hartwell was shown the door. He landed a consulting job at Arbor House and various other freelance engagements, including, of course, at Tor, and developed a clearer sense of what advances he could offer and how books could better be positioned to find their proper audience. (I’ll note that two different authors in this memorial volume refer to how little David could pay them for their novels and how they became his friends anyway.) He wasn’t always right, but he was right far more often than not, and that’s the secret of investing in the future.

The first time I saw David in person he was speaking on a panel at a convention—almost certainly a Lunacon or a Disclave—in the early 1990s. His manner of discussing books back then was frequently encrusted with recitations of publication histories and lists of editors, dry as a chronicle. Again, many years later I came to understand that those facts were essential building blocks of one of his lifetime preoccupations and areas of greatest insight, the influence of commercial considerations on the content of science fiction. Knowing which editor was buying which works and for how much money was almost as important to understanding the field at any given time as knowing which writers were working. Which, given what I just said about Timescape above, is obvious in retrospect, but sometimes I’m a slow learner.

(Please note that whenever I say “science fiction,” I almost always mean “science fiction and fantasy and horror”—all of the aspects of nonmimetic fiction were dear to David.)

I joined NYRSF in 1995 along with my spouses, Arthur Hlavaty and Bernadette Bosky. For a variety of reasons, I ended up falling more deeply into its tides than they did. One of the things that cemented my love of the magazine, of the project, of David, was the group viewing of the oddball low-budget film Plan 10 from Outer Space, which I still firmly believe was the best sf film of 1995. It was then that I realized that David was not somewhat ridiculous but gloriously so.

Science fiction was not just important but also delightful.

More broadly, David’s approach was consistently “Not just, but also.” For every rule, a welcome exception—sf is not just the domain of engineering but also of the future of families. Speculative fiction is not just science fiction but also fantasy, also horror. Scholarship is not just academic but also fannish, not just theory but also histories, not just the work but also its context.

David was born just as the Great Depression was ending in the United States. Like many of his generation, he grew up with an strong sense that wastefulness was a moral failing. This expressed itself as a ferocious frugality and led him to dance constantly on the verge of outright hoarding.

He channeled these tendencies into collecting from a very early age. One of the earliest photos of him I saw was of a display of his sf book collection that he assembled for some sort of talent show either late in high school or early in college. He had even then a presentiment of his future.

Years ago, the radio series This American Life ran an article about Roger Wendlick, a man who, on a whim, decided to collect a copy of every book ever written about Lewis and Clark. (You can listen to it here <www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/137/the-book-that-changed-your-life?act=3> or read a transcript here <www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/137/transcript>.) Over the course of 14 years, he built the largest library of Lewis and Clark books in the US, probably in the world; but only after he sold the collection to Lewis & Clark College did he feel he’d really accomplished something with it.

David accumulated things. He accumulated relationships as avidly as books, authors as avidly as friendships. But it was always to a purpose: keeping things where he could get at them, to show them to those who needed them. He hoped that he could see to it that everything would be displayed to its best advantage.

His trademark sentence was, “Have you also considered...?” He would find in his memory, imperfect yes but also vast, connections and examples and exceptions that would extend any insight, challenge any generalization, improve any argument.

All of this gave him the perfect temperament for an editor. He showed me, clearly and repeatedly, how the job of the editor was to help the author display the best version of the work. I would sit and watch as he took an article that was almost right and cut a sentence here, reorder two paragraphs, and miraculously have it come out the other side vastly improved. (I also frequently saw him take an article and do nothing to it because it didn’t need anything. That’s the real genius of an editor.)

All of this seems of a piece with one of David’s underheralded roles, which was as an emollient for the sf field. (Thank Patrick Nielsen Hayden for that word; it’s so spot-on.) He did great work in bringing people together, resolving disputes, making sure that dissent was attended and respected. I remember once making a harsh comment about a major figure in the field, a notorious curmudgeon (call him “Ishmael”); David explained that he, too, used to get deeply annoyed with Ishmael but finally realized that Ishmael was as much in love with science fiction as David, himself, was, that he wasn’t going away, and that it would be easier for everyone if he just decided they would get along. He found the better narrative and focused on that.

In this light, it’s fitting that David’s most famous statement is one he didn’t create—“The golden age of science fiction is twelve.” He was careful to credit it to Peter Graham, but it stuck to him. David was always gracious with credit, and one of the great regrets of his life was that, as he settled in to his iconic position, all the credit would flow to him. He knew how much of what was good in his works was thanks to the people around him—to Kathryn, to his long string of brilliant editorial assistants, to his friends, and of course to his authors.

I don’t want to make it seem like David was some sort of cardboard saint. He was prone to anger, but to an amazing degree he was capable of moving past it. He was graceful enough that he could speak in complete honesty with people on diametrical sides of an argument and have them both come away convinced he agreed with them. His ability to see many sides could sometimes lead to inaction. And the determination that made him so productive could decay into stubbornness.

As news of David’s death spread through the online world, I was struck again and again by how closely the David that everyone else knew accorded with the one I knew. I was not privy to large parts of David’s life—although I know his family (and I am grateful to all of them for making me feel welcome in their home for so many years), I have deliberately tried not to pry too deeply into their lives. But seriously, I spent hours sorting his Con Edison bills and tax receipts; I know David pretty dang well. And the way he built himself a world in which he could act like himself at all levels is an inspiration.

Finally, an anecdote.

David once told me about a question he was presented during his doctoral process. (I’m not sure if it was during his defense or during comps.) The questioner handed him a sheet of paper with a Provençal troubadour song and asked young David what was unusual about it. He stared at it, flummoxed, and made a guess about the meter. The correct answer, he was told, was that it was signed. Yes, he realized instantly; most troubadour poetry is anonymous. I’ve never been sure why this anecdote stuck with me; I think it was just a rare example of one of the times that David was caught completely off-guard by something he already knew.

It has been a joy to have David in my life for the last 20 years; I hope that, on balance, it was a joy for him as well.

Kevin J. Maroney, Gordon Van Gelder, David Hartwell & Teresa Nielsen Hayden at the 20th Anniversary NYRSF Reading, September 9, 2008.
Photo courtesy of Houari B.