One of the mixed blessings about attending international conventions is that you make friends that you only see once a year, or sometimes once every few years. And then, because conventions are typically an insane cascade of happenings, must-do’s, and obligations, you never quite see those people for long enough.

One of the people who I didn’t get to catch up with properly in Boston was Mike Walsh, publisher of Old Earth Books and all round good guy. I first ran into Mike following up review stuff for Locus, and found that we share a love of the fiction of Howard Waldrop and Avram Davidson (Mike gets to walk with the angels, if for no other reason that he published Limekiller), which you should go buy right away).

At Boston Mike published a handful of beautiful looking, and intrinsically cool, new books. Two of them came as a bit of a shock – Centenary editions of Cliff Simak’s City and Way Station. They were a shock because I couldn’t quite believe that the Centenary of Simak’s birth was going by essentially unremarked upon. I’m really happy Mike has published these books, and you should buy them too (especially Way Station which I love beyond reason), but a major publisher should be doing something. If we can have treasuries of short fiction by Avram Davidson, Jack Vance or R.A. Lafferty, shouldn’t there be one from Simak acting as a bulwark against the possibility of this fine writer being forgotten? sigh. Oh, Mike also published an edition of Edgar Pangborn’s Davy. I’ve never read it, but if Mike thinks it’s worth reprinting, I should. In my spare time. Soon.