The Moorings of the World

Yesterday, I heard that Martin H. Grenberg, publisher of Tekno books, had died. 

It was not entirely unexpected, as he had been in failing health for a while, but it was still a shock.  Given that he was born in 41, we could have expected to have him with us another fifteen years or so.

I don’t have many personal meeting stories to share.  I met him in person twice, at cons.  More often than that, I spoke to him on the phone, usually about some project he thought I’d be perfect for.

I can’t even claim to have written as much for him as most of my colleagues.  But he and tekno were known for one thing: in a profession where everything is insecure, they provided a security blanket.  If you absolutely needed fast money for your mortgage or rent, you let someone at Tekno know, and they’d try to find a place for you in their myriad anthologies.

In 2003, when my career crashed and burned at the same time we were paying on two mortgages, I sent up the alarm and over the next year between anthologies and other projects, Tekno contributed markedly to our roof over head and food on the table.  (The rest being supplied in an advance by Jim Baen who paid the full thing up front instead of in three parts because he knew I needed it.)  Most of our income comes from my husband, but that was tapped out just keeping mortgages paid and the utilities and other pesky things, and left us at the mercy of emergencies and disasters — which always happen.

Also, long before I was published, I was addicted to Tekno anthologies.  I’d buy them before plane rides, because I figured even if I hated one or two stories, I was likely to like the rest.  (This tended to hold true.)  And because they were grouped on themes, I could choose a theme I wanted to read or had some interest in.  Dinosaurs, say.  Or mermaids.  Trying to figure out how the author would weave the theme in added interest, too.  They kept me from becoming suicidally bored on long flights.

Martin Greenberg was a kindly figure in the field, one of those that those of my generation tended to look up to as a fixture, someone who would always be there.

One by one they’re passing away and leaving the world tilting on its foundations.  It happens in every generation, but it is in its nature that it feels new each time.

In time, replacements will come — probably different in the fast-changing publishing world — and time will move on.  But that doesn’t diminish who they were and what they did for the time they were here.

Ave Atque Vale, Marty — the world was made better by having you in it.