Call me Titan

Afterword

He wrote a lot of magnificent, unforgettable science fiction, sure, but so did my late and still lamented friends X, Y, and Z, and yet their deaths didn’t have the kick-in-the-belly impact of Roger’s. For one thing, it came so soon. Fifty-eight isn’t an appropriate age for dying—especially when you’re as youthful and vigorous and full of life and creative energy as Roger still was. But I lament him also because he was such a sweet and completely lovable man.

I knew him almost thirty years, and I had hoped to know him thirty years more, and now that is not to be. In all those three decades I never heard him utter an unkind word about anyone. (Nor did I ever hear anybody utter an unkind word about him.) He was a man of great patience, high good humor, and warm goodwill, as I learned when the inordinately punctual Robert Silverberg showed up an hour late for dinner with him two times running, for a different silly reason each time. In all senses of the word he was a joyous man to know.

So I’m going to miss the author of “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” and “... And Call Me Conrad” and all the rest of those wonderful stories, sure. We’ll never know now what marvels of inventiveness were about to emerge from his fertile mind. But most of all I’ll miss my friend Roger. If you live long enough, you’re going to outlive a lot of your friends, and you come to expect that after a time, although you don’t ever quite get used to the frequency and inevitability of the losses. This one, though, is a particularly hard one to accept.