Mike Resnick in 2006, before the witch-hunt.

“All I’ve ever been is a writer.”
“If you read a novel with a scientific lecture in it, I guarantee it’s not one of mine.” — Mike Resnick, five-time Hugo winner

Mike Resnick, the winner of numerous SF awards, including five Hugos—back when they counted for something—died the other day. While not a berserker in the front rank of the shield-wall, Mike was one of us. How so? Let me count the ways.

Mike Resnick graduated from high school in 1959 and thereupon moved to Chicago to attend college. He soon became part of early SF fandom—his memoirs of which came back to bite him, as shown below. Mike’s first published prose was his “5 Barsoomian Maps” article in Camille Cazedessus’ venerable ERB-dom, which was soon followed by the pastiche, “The Forgotten Sea of Mars”. Mike—a life-long fan of H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs and A. Merritt—went on to write several more ERB/Sword and Planet-related articles for ERB-dom over the years.

If that was all Resnick ever did in the S&P field, it would be sufficient to grant him membership within the ranks of “Our People”, but he did far more than that. In 1967, his S&P novel, Goddess of Ganymede, was published. It was soon followed by the sequel, Pursuit On Ganymede.

From the 1970s-on, Resnick made his biggest impact as a pulp fiction partisan by way of his essays, intros and editing. He wrote an article on Conan. He wrote a few more things about ERB. He famously curbstomped James Blish’s badmouthing of A. Merritt. His intros praising Henry Kuttner, Manly Wade Wellman and Poul Anderson are all excellent. As a book editor, he edited the classic Girls for the Slime God and Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. As a magazine editor, he did Space Crom’s work by handling the editing chores for Jim Baen’s Universe and Galaxy’s Edge.

One of Mike’s most recent acts of common sanity and humanity came in 2013. This is the incident from his early days in SF fandom which I referred to earlier. He and fellow veteran SF author, Barry Malzberg, wrote one of their on-going “Dialogue” columns for the two-hundredth issue of The Bulletin. The Bulletin is the house-organ of the Science Fiction Writers of America. The two of them were discussing the pioneering assistant editor of Other Worlds magazine, Bea Mahaffey. Here is the “offending” text, quoted straight from someone who considered it “sad, embarassing and disgusting”:

[Barry Malzberg]

“[Bea Mahaffey] was competent, unpretentious, and beauty pageant gorgeous …

[Mike Resnick]

“[Bea] was the only pro I knew in Cincinnati when [my wife, Carol, and I] moved here from the Chicago area more than a third of a century ago. She was incredibly generous with her time and reminiscences, and I spent a lot of time with her, on the phone and in person, during the first few months when I was learning my way around town.”

The Idiot On The Internet—and possible card-carrying member of the Junior Anti-Sex League—who posted those quotes had this to say in condemnation:

“It’s one thing for men to find women attractive. It’s another for men to focus on that aspect of particular women when discussing their contributions to the world of SF–to the exclusion of discussing any contributions made by said women… “

The very words he quoted prove him wrong. While I didn’t post all of Malzberg’s and Resnick’s dialogue above, I can assure you that TIOTI’s text that I omitted made no mention of Ms. Mahaffey’s loveliness ahead of everything else. Read the quotes above for yourself. Neither Malzberg nor Resnick mentioned Bea’s gorgeousness before they mentioned her other fine qualities and attributes, let alone ignoring her contributions to SF as an editor or a fan. This is a case of straw-manning and wanting someone to commit a “crime”. It was a witch-hunt.

Resnick and Malzberg were also condemned for calling Mahaffey a “lady editor”. During their era, calling a woman a “lady”—just as calling a man a “true gentleman”—was the highest praise one could give. It conferred an estimation of class and dignity upon the person in question.

To their eternal credit, neither Resnick nor Malzberg groveled before the sanctimonious scolds and RightThinkers who tried to make them recant. They did not accede to the demands by their moral “betters” that they engage in a struggle session and repudiate their past wrongthink.

Mike was called an “asshole” and a “misogynist” and much worse.* He never budged.

Women, in general, like to be told they’re beautiful. I think that the chance of Mahaffey objecting—from beyond the grave or, especially, if she were still alive—to Mike and Barry calling her “gorgeous” is very near infinitesimal. What we have here are envious danger-haired (present-or-future) cat-ladies and their pathetic white knights rushing to exclude any mention of physical attractiveness. If they truly didn’t care whether one women was more attractive than another—if such a thing was “shallow” and “irrelevant”—then why even worry about it? I consider Wendy Pini more attractive than Leigh Brackett, but I would never rate the former over the latter in terms of writing ability.

Resnick called a beautiful woman “beautiful”. Good on him and good on him for not groveling. Simply noticing things will get you whacked.

Lawrence Person has a good assessment of the situation here.

Raise a glass to Mike’s shade, sword-brothers.

*This, to a man who dedicated every book he wrote to his wife, Carol, and who wrote numerous essays and edited an anthology praising women—sorry, “womyn”—in SFF. None of that did him any good when the Thought Police showed up at his door. Moral of the story: You can’t depend on your past actions to protect you. You have to constantly adjust your thoughts to conform to whatever the new “concensus” happens to be.

The legendary and scandalous issue of The Bulletin. — The legendary and scandalous issue of *The Bulletin*.