Progress

Editor GoH: David Hartwell
If you want the essential man, you must imagine him leaning
forward, eyes bright, grinning almost wolfishly as he shares
his enthusiasm for a story, a writer, a musician, a poem. Or
he may equally well be listening. “I have infinite patience for
hearing why somebody’s work is good,” he once said in
my presence, “and none whatsoever for why it isn’t.”
But let me give you some background.
By the nature of the profession, editors work their secret
ministry far from the public eye, and the great bulk of what
they do goes unnoticed and unremarked. So I cannot pretend
to be familiar with more than a fraction of David Hartwell’s
accomplishments.
The little I know, however, is impressive enough. In his time,
David has published and edited magazines of poetry (The Little
Magazine) and criticism (The New York Review of Science
Fiction), and edited a major fiction magazine (Cosmos Science
Fiction and Fantasy Magazine). He’s a small press publisher
of long standing (I cannot resist noting that Dragon Press
published my own Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary) and has been an
essayist, a reviewer, and the author of book-length nonfiction.
Further, David’s thumping big critical anthologies are
magisterial attempts to define modern fantasy, science fiction,
and horror, as well as such sub-genres as space opera and
hard science fiction, by example and explication. (Northern
Stars: The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction, co-edited
with Glenn Grant, is probably the best single starting place
for anyone who’d like to get a sense of the distinctive nature
of Canadian SF.) He’s a collector, scholar, and part-time
dealer in classic genre fiction. He’s won both the Hugo and
World Fantasy Awards, and edited novels that went on to
win the Nebula or Hugo Award.
Are you out of breath yet? There’s more. David chairs
the board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention and
is co-administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award. He’s been
an editor for Signet, Berkley/Putnam, Gregg Press, Pocket
Books/Simon & Schuster (where he created Timescape
Books, one of the best lines of genre fiction ever published),
Arbor House, William Morrow, and is now a senior editor
at Tor Books. With his wife, Kathryn Cramer, he edits both
science fiction and fantasy best-of-year anthologies. He has a
huckster table at most of the conventions he attends.
He has, in short, filled every ecological niche in the
publishing universe save one – that of a fiction writer.
This last is unusual and may be unique. Almost all editors
begin as writers, whether successfully or not – and almost all
writers begin by reading a bad work of fiction and thinking, “I
could write better than this!” David Hartwell’s moment on the
road to Damascus came when he read a bad science fiction
novel and thought, “I could show the writer how to fix this!”
He’s been on that road ever since.
David has been my friend for the entirety of my
professional career, and in that time he’s been unfailingly
warm and open-hearted. He’s a bit of a raconteur, something
of an amateur historian of the field, and possessed of a
puckish sense of humor. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative
Medieval Literature and the most extraordinary fashion sense
in the known universe. He is a tireless promoter of the good.
And, to this end, he has an agenda.
That agenda, if I read him correctly, goes something as
follows: Science fiction is best understood as itself. It has
virtues that are not achievable in mainstream fiction, and trying
to shoehorn SF into the mainstream or even to judge it by
mainstream standards only dilutes those virtues. This, however,
makes it in no way inferior to other forms of literature – merely
different. It is to be celebrated, admired, and cherished.
As is David Hartwell.
I’ve had many a conversation with David and I can always
tell if I’m holding up my end of one. He leans forward. His eyes
brighten. He smiles almost – but not quite – wolfishly. For a writer,
that’s as close to being the embodiment of one’s ideal audience
as is ever going to be met in the flesh. Which is, I suppose, one
definition of what an editor is. – Michael Swanwick
8 Anticipation – Rapport préparatoire 4