Charlie called tonight, sounded very grave. Robert Heinlein died this weekend. I’ll probably be working late just about every night this week.

LOCUS’ nightmare was that Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke would all die in the same plane crash.

I recall Charlie prefacing this by saying he didn’t want me to read about it in the newspaper, which was sweet, and a reflection of how much the news had shaken him. Heinlein was a demigod in SF fandom. A few years later when I was working at Dark Carnival Bookstore, I offended more than one hard science fiction fan by referring to Heinlein with insufficient reverence.

Though I got to meet many of the major figures in science fiction, Charlie never took me to visit Heinlein, probably because he felt he couldn’t trust me to keep my mouth shut if Heinlein brought up politics.

We threw together a new front page to put in over the one we’d already set up.