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[personal profile] calimac
I'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.

Date: 2005-02-12 10:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wouldyoueva.livejournal.com
Thank you for this. Jack was quite proud of his work with Mirage Press, an amazing achievement considering he started it while still in high school. In addition to the GUIDE, Jack was also able to get a trade paperback edition out of THE ATLAS OF FANTASY by J. B. Post.

Did you know Andrews-Macneil publishes a GUIDE TO MIDDLE EARTH desk calendar?

Date: 2005-02-12 06:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
The Atlas of Fantasy! I'd forgotten Mirage published that. Another book I perused at an early stage to my great profit.

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