NYRSF 346 Editorial: Loss

First, I have the honor of introducing our Ursula K. Le Guin issue and Sandra Lindow’s comprehensive examination of the Library of America’s Hainish Novels and Stories omnibus, a monumental book for a monumental career.

But Le Guin was more than a monument. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but she was deeply entangled in the sf community, an inspiration and more importantly a friend to so many, and even family to a few. Our publishers—Gavin Grant and Kelly Link—named their daughter “Ursula” out of love for Ms. Le Guin. For all of us she was a landmark; for many of us, she was an integral part of life.

We will feel her loss. Mercifully, we have all her work to guide us back to her.

The International Conference on the Fantastic this year brought home another loss, that of Kit Reed. When she missed last year’s conference on short notice, we all assumed we would see her again around the pool and across the table, her acerbic charm on full blast. So when she died suddenly in September, it was a shock, and the void she left, in the world, in the conference, was jagged and raw.

The science fiction community, to a degree almost unknown in any other artistic field, brings together the creators and the audience—who are, of course, often the same people. (I witnessed the squeals of delight of a World Fantasy Award–nominated novelist when she got a first chance to dine with Kit at the Conference years ago.) Let us not take for granted the joy of sitting around the banquet table, or the bar, or the pool, with people who have left their story tracks in our heads.

I said in my last editorial: “Our next issue, which I expect will be out toward the end of February ... ”

Well, that didn’t happen. The retinal treatments about which I marveled and complained last time stretched to the end of February, and just as I was starting to recover, we were hit with weather best described as “bananapants.” We had five snowstorms between March 2 and April 2, often accompanied by strong winds. The first and worst of the storms, a classic “Nor’easter” (aka “New England hurricane”) had sustained winds in the 40–50 mph range and gusts much higher. Our theatre critic emeritus, Jen Gunnels, was actually thrown against a wall by a gust while walking home from her train on the first night.

Our house, Valentine’s Castle, lost power for 96 hours from Friday to Tuesday, leaving us huddling around candles and flashlights until common sense prevailed. One of the special levels of crazy in the storm was its caprice; at the worst point, just short of 100,000 people had lost power in Westchester County, but that represented only about 10% of the buildings, with the outages in scattered pockets throughout. On the first night, houses across the street from us had power, until a large tree took down powerlines Saturday morning. (There were more concentrated outages as one went up the coast into New England proper.)

One forgets how much of modern living is propelled by electricity, and I found myself habitually turning toward my computer, or the tv, or a light switch. The telephone line continued to work, though of course the answering machine connected to it didn’t. Our gas furnace was on, but because the thermostat and the fans are electric, it did us no good, so we sat with candles and battery-powered lanterns as the house slowly lost heat. Finally, it got too cold, and because of the storm’s whimsy, many hotels and motels still had power; on Sunday night we decamped to one to wait for Con Ed to rescue our house.

Other than the lost time, our biggest casualty was a 30’ pine tree in the front yard—as pictured below. In her ruin, we finally gave her a name: James Tipped Tree.

Onward.

—Kevin J. Maroney and the editors