SO LONG, MARTY!

Martin H. Greenberg: March 1st 1941—June 25th 2011

I don’t propose to go railing on at the chaos inflicted by the Reaper on each and every one of us, as he casually, callously and almost gleefully removes loved relatives and friends from our communal hearthside, because Harlan already did it par excellence in his Foreword/Intro to Angry Candy. But what the hell: I simply cannot allow the death of Marty Greenberg to pass without any comment at all: indeed, anything that I say should ideally be accompanied by a hawk of well-chewed tobaccy-spit down the Grim one’s black tunic.

Along with Ed Gorman and Richard Chizmar, Marty was instrumental in getting my then fledgling short work to a wider audience (ie. USA) when, having read one of my horror yarns, he wrote me (by letter, of course, in those fondly remembered pre-email days) and suggested I try him with a darkish crime tale for an upcoming anthology . . . the only slight potential difficulty being that it had to have a cat in it. “But,” I suggested when I called him up, “I’ve never had a cat!” To which Marty reminded me that I had never killed a man (or so he hoped) and yet I was able to document such in my writing with apparent ease. A fair point. Thus followed ‘Constant Companion’, the first of, I think, seven stories involving cats (and I still don’t have one) and another fifty or so more for a wide and wild variety of anthology projects and editors.

We became friends of a sort—as far as the four thousand mile hike between our front doors might allow—and, starting with Heaven Sent in 1995 we shifted into collaborating on a string of anthologies for DAW Books (Moon Shots, Mars Probes, Constellations, Forbidden Planets and We Think, Therefore We Are) which were great fun to do . . . made all the more easy by Marty’s speedy dealing with the contributors who were paid pronto as soon as the author in each case had agreed to any editorial tinkering (if there were any to be made).

But that’s all business. Still important, of course, but just business.

It was as a person that Marty truly excelled, with an easy but professional manner, a genuine and natural warmth, and a generosity of both spirit and time that was truly second to none. We’re all of us made the poorer by his passing, not just the wonderful team at Tekno Books (long may they shine) or the many publishing houses that enjoyed the fruits of his organizational and editing skills. Geh gesund, Marty!