Letters of Note recently featured a letter from Edgar Allen Poe to an editor apologizing for past drunken behavior and desperately asking a favor at the same time.
You must have conceived a queer idea of me – but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying.
David Klaus, who contributed the link, comments:
I’d hazard a guess that a lot of editors have gotten this sort of letter over the years.
People appreciate Edgar Allen Poe now. When he died in 1849 only 10 people came to his funeral, but on October 11 when the Poe House and Museum staff give him the sendoff they think he deserved 350 mourners will attend each of two services. The macabre tribute is part of a year-long celebration of the 200th year of Poe’s birth.
A coffin holding a replica of Poe’s body will be the centerpiece. John Astin, best known as Gomez Addams on TV’s “The Addams Family,” will serve as master of ceremonies:
“It’s sort of a way of saying, ‘Well, Eddie, your first funeral wasn’t a very good one, but we’re going to try to make it up to you, because we have so much respect for you,’” said Astin, who toured as Poe for years in a one-man show.
I think if Poe wasn’t dead already when they put him in the coffin, waking to discover Gomez Addams presiding over his funeral would finish the job.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]
The US Postal Service will honor two fantasy writers on postage stamps next year: Rod Serling and Edgar Allan Poe.
I checked — neither was on the list of historic sf figures Chris Barkley gathered petitions to honor ten years ago (see File 770:133, page 18).
That Serling should be selected ahead of everyone else on the list is a little bit ironic because it validates one of Chris’ own arguments — he told Science Fiction Weekly that the writers he named deserved recognition because they laid the foundations for currently-popular sf tv series and movies:
We know that without the influences of E.E. “Doc” Smith, Murray Leinster, Leigh Brackett and Edmund Hamilton, it’s doubtful you would be enjoying Star Trek, Farscape, Babylon 5 and Star Wars today. Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg might have well been sitcom producers without them.
In case you’re curious, here are the leading lights Chris wanted to see on stamps:
Artists: Frank R. Paul, Chesley Bonestell, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, Vaughn Bode, Roy Krenkel, Ed Emshwiller, Jack Gaughan. Editors: John W. Campbell, Jr., Judy Lynn Del Rey, Anthony Boucher, Terry Carr, T.E. Dikty, Geoff Conklin, Terry Carr. Authors: E.E. “Doc” Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak, Paul Linebarger (Cordwainer Smith), Will Jenkins (Murray Leinster), Theodore Sturgeon, C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Edmund Hamilton, A. Merritt, Alfred Bester, Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), Philip K. Dick, Cyril M. Kornbluth, James Blish, Fritz Leiber, Frank Herbert, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Pangborn, Stanley Weinbaum.
It’s still a good idea, Chris!
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]
