Gardner Dozois, 1947-2018

As editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction from 1986 to 2004, Gardner Dozois probably did more to shape my taste as a science fiction and fantasy reader than any other figure in the field. Reading the Dozois-era Asimov’s exposed my young self to cutting-edge writers and genres and styles I hadn’t encountered before. It was a heady, eclectic and catholic mix, and it expanded my reading horizons (imagine, if you will, a teenage reader going from reading Isaac Asimov to reading Lucius Shepard in one jump); were it not for that magazine I might well have been stuck in a hard-sf Golden Age ghetto. It taught me to be open to newness in science fiction.

Gardner Dozois died this afternoon of an overwhelming systemic infection. He had been in poor health for a while—he missed the Nebulas last weekend—but as early as yesterday he had been expected to recover. He was 70 years old.

I met him a couple of times at conventions back in 2011. He was in person what his reputation promised: a madcap and ebullient performer, the polar opposite of most of his fiction, which was bleak and beautiful, written with elegance and grace, and tended toward the dark end of the spectrum.¹ For an introduction to his writing, his short story collection, When the Great Days Come, which I reviewed in 2011, is still in print: it’s a mix of his best early work and his more recent stories. What may be his final story, “Unstoppable,” appears in the current (May/June 2018) issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I was a devoted fan of his fiction, but he was far better known as an editor: of Asimov’s and of decades of Year’s Best and theme anthologies. Michael Swanwick once said that Gardner was a better writer than he was an editor, and that, like John W. Campbell, saw his writing be overshadowed by his long tenure as an editor. But Gardner was not only a better writer than Campbell, he was also the better editor. He was arguably the best editor the field has ever had. No, check that: the best. More relevant, more transformative, more impactful than anyone else I can think of. His fingerprints and his footprints can be found on every exposed surface of the science fiction and fantasy field, and if you see your favourite writer mourning his loss tonight, there’s a reason: he opened the door for so very, very many of them.

Photos: Gardner Dozois (and Michael Swanwick) at Readercon, July 2011.

1. An exception was his work in collaboration, which was as zany as the man in person: if you can track down a copy of Slow Dancing Through Time, his collection of collaborations, grab it.