Friday Ginjer Buchanan posted on FB that her partner of over 50 years had died. You don’t really think of ‘power couples’ in the SF world, but they have both been so omnipresent in not only genre publishing but as enthusiastic boosters of the same. I first met them probably (my memory is a sieve unstuck in time) at Necon back in the 90s and since then many times, mostly at cons and random emails back and forth. ‘Canadian nice’ is a bit of a cliché but one of the reasons it became so was people like John. Are there people like John? I’m sure there must be but in my life, not so many. As a persistent fringe dweller in the publishing world, I’m not sure why John always found time for me, but we had a lot of great conversations in different places in NY and beyond — probably most recently in Dublin, before the plague times. He was an astute and visionary editor, who always seemed to take the vagaries and disasters of the publishing life in stride with the certainty that something new was always coming on the horizon. That’s the kind of hopefulness that draws people to the speculative world of fantastic works. His sense of humour was quietly absurd. That slow burn double take he would do always made me laugh. Age speeds up the number of losses we experience and our surprised disbelief that each one is far too young for that. His brain has gone to science, but his influence and endless kindnesses live on with us. I think often of Maya Angelou’s observation that we may forget what is said and done but we don’t forget how people made us feel. John always made me feel appreciated, my work appreciated despite the indifference of the greater publishing world. I will always expect to see him down the long corridors of a convention hall.

If you’re going to KC for WFC, Ginjer will be picking up his Lifetime Achievement award. Brief obit at Locus. Featured image via Locus: Ginjer Buchanan & John Douglas (photo by Francesca Myman)