[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

That was two days before Alfie died in 1987.
As far as I can determine, the last thing Alfie ever wrote professionally was for me. It was a little
promotional blurb for the back cover of a graphic novel adaptation I edited of Ray Bradbury s Frost
and Fire. In longhand he wrote:  Forgive the delay, Julie dear. I m in hospital, as you know, and barely
able to write, as you can see. And then he said:
It s the ambition of the artist to  make a new sound. In other words, to see what everyone else
sees but to think what no one has ever thought. This is a rare quality and Ray Bradbury is one of
the very few artists who possesses it.
Six times every ten years the Science Fiction Writers of America at its Nebula Awards celebration
gives someone its Grand Master Award. In 1987 they told Alfie that he would receive the award that
year. Someone was to give a little speech about him and there was some thought that his then-agent,
Kirby McCauley, would give it, but I objected. I was his original agent and, pulling rank, I insisted on
telling again pretty much the story I ve just told.
By the time of the awards ceremony, Alfie had left us. I picked up the award but really did not
know what to do with it. The banquet had been in California and I had no incentive or reason to take the
bulky trophy with me on a plane to New York, and it wasn t mine anyway. His wife Rollie had died a
few years earlier. Alfie had no surviving family that we knew of, so I gave it to a friend in town for
safekeeping. Harlan Ellison lives in a rambling house off Mullholland Drive that he calls Ellison
Wonderland, and there Alfie s Nebula Award sits in a special air-conditioned room.
After AIfie died I sat in on a Bester retrospective discussion panel at Lunacon, a science-fiction
convention in New York, with Isaac Asimov, Harry Harrison and Algis Budrys. I told what I knew about
Alfie, and about how he died. His last days were excruciatingly painful. A good and wise man who
chooses, as Alfie did, to live large, seldom has an easy death. Talking, I soon realized that the fellow on
my right was sobbing and wiping his eyes. For a moment, Alfie s final story had crusty old Isaac Asimov
crying like a baby.
" " "
Alfie was to have been guest of honor at the World Science Fiction convention held in Brighton, England,
in 1987 but he was too ill to attend. The committee asked Alfie if it would be all right to send a television
crew to his home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to film a guest-of-honor speech and an interview, to
which he agreed. Would he like anyone in particular to come down and interview him, they wanted to
know. Yes, he said, he wanted Julie Schwartz to do it.
I telephoned Alfie to ask how it was, of all the people in the world, he picked me to interview him.
 For revenge! he said, bellowing with labored laughter.
That laugh was still contagious, and I burst out too. And he kept on laughing, and every time I tried
to stop I started upagain. I had to. We laughed until we hung up and I laughed some more.
I never did get to interview Alfie. I never did get him to explain for exactly what it was he required
 revenge. Whenever I tell that story to anyone, I get a laugh. But I still don t get the joke. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]