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Jack Chalker
Feb. 11th, 2005 09:54 pmI've seen posts to the effect that Jack Chalker died. Not a great surprise, as he'd been severely ailing, but sad nonetheless.
I met him only very casually, but I was used to seeing him at Worldcons, which will be a poorer place without his presence. He was a good speaker who had interesting things to say.
The quality of Jack's fiction is a controversial topic, but I'd just like to record here my enjoyment of his 1979 stand-alone novel And the Devil Will Drag You Under, one of the more imaginative of collect-the-coupons fantasies. Chalker evades the artificiality of the premise by treating it as comic, while presenting the plot as a serio-comic mixture. The most memorable scene shows the hero, required to participate in a footrace to retrieve a maguffin located some 15 miles away across a featureless plain, suddenly finding the plain replaced by a perfect replica of the island of Manhattan, whose length he must negotiate against the competition.
But the Jack Chalker I would like to honor is the editor and publisher of Mirage Press, which among other things published the first book edition of Robert Foster's indispensable Guide to Middle-earth. All tribute to the small-press publisher who saw the early drafts of this in Niekas and knew it would make a good book. Finding a library copy of Foster (and all tribute to the small-press publisher who knows how to get his books into far-off public libraries) was one of my greatest early thrills in Tolkien studies. I was still in the process of trying to figure out how to acquire a copy of my own, or if I could afford the hardcover, when the book suddenly appeared in a Ballantine paperback reprint (and all tribute to the small-press publisher who can get his books picked up by a major paperback house).
Mirage also published the first Feghoot collection, which I bought the minute I saw it.
I met him only very casually, but I was used to seeing him at Worldcons, which will be a poorer place without his presence. He was a good speaker who had interesting things to say.
The quality of Jack's fiction is a controversial topic, but I'd just like to record here my enjoyment of his 1979 stand-alone novel And the Devil Will Drag You Under, one of the more imaginative of collect-the-coupons fantasies. Chalker evades the artificiality of the premise by treating it as comic, while presenting the plot as a serio-comic mixture. The most memorable scene shows the hero, required to participate in a footrace to retrieve a maguffin located some 15 miles away across a featureless plain, suddenly finding the plain replaced by a perfect replica of the island of Manhattan, whose length he must negotiate against the competition.
But the Jack Chalker I would like to honor is the editor and publisher of Mirage Press, which among other things published the first book edition of Robert Foster's indispensable Guide to Middle-earth. All tribute to the small-press publisher who saw the early drafts of this in Niekas and knew it would make a good book. Finding a library copy of Foster (and all tribute to the small-press publisher who knows how to get his books into far-off public libraries) was one of my greatest early thrills in Tolkien studies. I was still in the process of trying to figure out how to acquire a copy of my own, or if I could afford the hardcover, when the book suddenly appeared in a Ballantine paperback reprint (and all tribute to the small-press publisher who can get his books picked up by a major paperback house).
Mirage also published the first Feghoot collection, which I bought the minute I saw it.
