Mocking the Dead
The persons over at File 770 have decided to mock the memory of the late, great Mr. David Hartwell by intimating that if I compliment the editing skills of Vox Day, and call him the best editor with whom I have had the pleasure to work, this means I am somehow diminishing Mr. Hartwell’s contributions.
These sentiments are expressed with such reckless contumely, and with such disrespect for the dead, that I cannot bring myself to repeat them. It is merely horrible what people will say about a man who is no longer here to defend himself.
Mr. Hartwell, almost singlehandedly, was behind the New Space Opera Renaissance, of which I have the honor to be a minor member. With the discovery and promotion of authors such as Greg Bear and David Brin, he brought Hard SF back from the outfield into the front and center of the genre. Few men aside from John W. Campbell Jr. or Hugo Gernsbeck himself had such a profound and beneficial influence on the field.
I note one commenter, writing under the thrice-greatest name of Trismegistus, on Vox Day’s website makes an insightful remark:
The 770 crew don’t appear to understand what David Hartwell’s job actually was. He picked books for Tor to publish, and cultivated new authors. The detail work of massaging manuscripts was handled by assistants. Mr. Hartwell’s time and skills were too valuable for that. Heck, most of the manuscript editing is done by freelance copy-editors rather than Tor employees anyway. An editor in Mr. Hartwell’s position might perhaps suggest large-scale structural changes in order to make the book acceptable to publish, but he’s not going over the manuscript with a red pen.
And this is exactly the case. My editors at Tor who actually took red pencil to my manuscript were Mr. Jim Minz. Mr. Moshe Feder, and Mr. Marco Palmieri.
I enjoyed working with all of them, all were friendly and professional, but they all had sort of a hand’s-off approach to the editing process, or perhaps they thought my manuscripts as submitted were satisfactory.
However, my most gratitude goes to Mr. Hartwell. It was due to his efforts and frankly reputation that the sequel to A.E. van Vogt’s WORLD OF NULL-A was published at all. The estate of A.E. van Vogt was unwilling to work with anyone else in the field. This is a cherished project of mine, more than I had ever dared to dream, because I would not have been so absurd as to dare to dream that my humble pen would be the one to write a sequel to my favorite book by my favorite author.
Mr. Hartwell did upon occasion make suggestions for structural changes. I can name three:
The opening scene of THE GOLDEN AGE, he suggested be broken up into several smaller scenes interspersed with scenes of Phaethon at the masquerade of the immortals: it was an excellent suggestion.
Mr. Hartwell also had me add a scene in MISTS OF EVERNESS to make it clear that the evil military officers and men betraying the US Constitution were traitors, and not representative of the average military man. This was also a suggestion that was pricelessly wise.
The final editorial change Mr. Hartwell made to my work was that he asked me to add material to TITANS OF CHAOS, and I happened to have at hand scenes already planned out for a training sequence on a deserted island and an expedition to the planet Mars, some of my favorite scenes in the book, making it very convenient for me to bring the book up to a proper length.
Mr. Hartwell did not make scene-by-scene and line-by-line recommendations or corrections. He never asked me to rewrite a paragraph, sharpen a scene, resolve a character differently, or give an ending more punch. His associates and assistants did that.
By way of contrast, Mr. Vox Day at Castalia House books suggested the very striking and apt curtain line for the novella version of ‘One Bright Star to Guide Them’ and make specific comments on every paragraph, practically every line.
I should explain: The short story version of this tale appeared originally in the Magazine of F&SF, and disappeared without notice and without fanfare. No one read it. For personal reasons, it is my favorite story of everything I have ever written, but as a short story, it was a flop.
When I expanded it to novella length, adding and adjusting according to Mr. Day’s coaching, this novella was nominated for a Hugo.
So it is not a hasty conclusion for me to say that this editing took a mediocre short story and reshaped and polished it into something fit to win the top award in the field.
That was what I had in mind when I complimented Mr. Day’s editing skills. Not only was I not comparing him to Mr. Hartwell, there was not even any basis for comparison, since Mr.Hartwell was not the man at Tor who edited my manuscripts.
Please note that I have previously complimented Mr. Day in ery similar terms when Mr. Hartwell was alive. He knew it and knew I was expressing no discontent with his work.
Second, the editors who did have a hand in editing my work include George RR Martin, Gardner Dozois, Andy Robertson, Danielle McPhail, Mike McPhail, John Joseph Adams, Katy Carl, Jonathan Strahan, Jake Freivald, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Gordon Van Gelder, James R. Beach, Brandon Sanderson, or the great Mike Allen, nor taken up the gauntlet to defend David Brin, Glen Yeffeth, Luke Coppen, Andrew Lazo, Mary Anne Phemister, Rebecca Vitz Cherico, Jed Donahue, Steve Skojec, Jason Rennie, Charles A Madison or Ken Rossignol.
Very rarely indeed did any of them see any changes that needed to be made. Most, especially Mr. Martin (though I doubt he remembers the event) greeting my work with praise that was nearly flattery.
Interpreting an innocent comment complimenting one editor to be a disparagement of someone who has passed away is an insult to the dead, because it implies such disparagement is expected, or even merited. It is, in effect, reenacting the scene in A Christmas Carol by Dickens where news of Scrooge’s death is met with levity by his men in his field who worked with him. Scrooge is the one being vilified in that scene.
And, of course, the dead man is no longer present to upbraid those using the memory of his passing as a weapon to attack his loving and loyal allies and coworkers still living.
For the hysterics at File 770 to badmouth Mr. Hartwell, and soil the memory of a man I admired and loved, is so appalling that my normal reaction of wrath in this case is one of pity.
Pity: because the kind of people who spit on graves are not happy people. Such reckless hatred makes the hatred-eaten man his own victim, and makes his mind his own dungeon and torture chamber. He claws out his own entrails and gnaws them. All good things, like cherishing the memory of the beloved dead, become, for him, a cause of malice and pain. Sunlight to him is darkness, and life is nightmare.
I begin to understand why so many of them speak of being frightened when no one menaces them, or of feeling unsafe when nothing threatens.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
