Barry N. Malzberg (1939-2024)

Late last night, I learned that Barry N. Malzberg had died. Born July 24, 1939, he was a writer and editor. His daughter, Erika, wrote: “My dad passed away this evening, around 4:30pm. My sister had been with him for a few hours and I was just getting back after having visited with my mother. He took his last breath almost the moment I arrived. It was very, very peaceful and we are so grateful.”

His fiction was ground-breaking and seemingly everywhere moments after he started publishing (his first science fiction story, “We’re Coming Through the Window,” was published in the August 1967 issue of Galaxy), but I’ll probably remember him more for his non-fiction: his essays on science fiction, literature, and the people in the field, which was his stock-in-trade for the last couple of decades.

I remember Barry as a fixture at the science fiction conventions I attended when I first got into the field, but I never really got to know him: there were too many bright and shiny new things and people clamoring for my attention for me to seek out the austere, somewhat foreboding looking fellow he was. Now, reading the reminiscences of so many of my friends, I’m realizing just how much I missed out by not getting to know him better. Rather than trying to recapitulate them, I commend to you posts on Facebook by John Kessel (https://www.facebook.com/john.kessel3), Adam-Troy Castro (https://www.facebook.com/adamtroycastro), and Kristine Kathryn Rusch (https://www.facebook.com/kristinekathrynrusch). I’m sure there will be more in the coming days.

He was nominated for a dozen Hugo and Nebula Awards, and his novel Beyond Apollo won the inaugural John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1973. His nonfiction works won two Locus Awards: The Engines of the Night (1983), and Breakfast in the Ruins: Science Fiction in the Last Millennium (2008), and I was pleased and honored to publish his third volume, The Bend at the End of the Road (2018).