The Ghost Story
(hey, it's my blog, so I can go back in time as I choose.)
~On this date a good friend of mine, possibly the smartest person I've known, passed away.
I met Steve Arlow in 1986 via my wife Shalla, while all of us were at MSU. Back then we hung out in Bryan Hall between dinner and sleep, and a fair number of people had made a regular D&D session out of weekends at Shalla's dormroom. I was an import - an underachiever horning in from Armstrong Hall across the way.
Steve struck me right off as singularly brilliant, thoughtful and ... okay, I can say with little doubt that he was truly sick and twisted even then. Anyone who could score that low on the Purity Test of days gone by would know that. Suffice it to say that he walked his own path, and that he never really got together with anyone since is really the saddest part of all. He kept in touch through that wave of graduations, and joined a veritable exodus to Ann Arbor afterward, where our social circle now blossomed (festered?) though he ended up doing so from Farmington for the most part. Even still, he was there. A strong voice in fandom, he 'got deep' in both the Stilyagi Corps and the fledgling Michigan Fandom community - even becoming one of the first and more enthusiastic Pinata Rider booster and vociferous member of their Ecircles sub-cult. So we'd never really lost touch.
Despite the sometimes fatalist and dour demeanor he had for a fraction of the time, he seemed to make the very best of all his hardships, and that is what made his death such a shock to me and a lot of people I know. We... seemed to know so little about a man who we thought we knew so well. A man who knew so much.
Anyway, the most significant people in our lives tend to leave the strangest legacies, and though this post is dated at the time of his passing, I want to relate a story that I hope keeps his memory fresh, and puts a little light on the subject of losing close friends.
A few months after this date, a few of Steve's closest friends got together and set about redistributing Steve's enormous book collection. I managed to get there in time to help organize the display, which I tell you was staggering. One of the books that I could not let get away (the majority of my take was reference and language guides) was the biography of Alan Turing, entitled ENIGMA (by Andrew Hodges). In fact I recall having to arm-wrestle Larry Kestenbaum for it; he relented when I told him it was for a project I was working on and that I would give it up afterward.
A curious coincidence was that I was very much ready to go online and buy the book, because I was working on a ghost story - the beginnings of which I had actually dictated to text with Viavoice and which seemed promising. The premise was to have been an encounter between a suicidal teen and the ghost of an elderly genius who'd just died of natural causes. That they could meet at all was a matter of 'brilliant' or radiant minds that thought along the same wavelength regardless of distance, like the ultimate radio frequency tuning only during near-death experiences. I chose as the subjects Alan Turing, whose lifestyle I'd only read about on Hodges' web-published excerpts, and the ghost of Thomas Edison. Needless to say, getting the book in hand was a boon.
It is a bit spooky that I inherited this book from the very person who inspired the story in the first place. Alan's death was also a bizarre and unsolved suicide, very close indeed.
Rather than being haunted, however, I became hopeful. By the end of the year I'd gotten the story written and it was in a submission-ready draft by maybe mid-2000, and it entered the postal circus that was my submissions process for my short fiction. The turnaround time for each sub was around a month, so I was pretty sure the story wouldn't come up for air for about a year, like many of the others I'd shopped at the same time. Meanwhile I'd busied myself with THE JAM.
Chrismas Eve 2001 I finally got copy and an acceptance for RADIANT SOULS, in Lost Worlds edited by Holley Drye. In her letter (profusely apologetic for not being able to notify me sooner) she stated the story was beautiful and that it ran in the October 2001 issue. It was a very pleasant holiday gift, and I owe it - my first fiction print publication credit - to Steve Arlow.
*The concept of radiant souls gets spookier. At the same time I was writing the story, Greg Egan's ORACLE hit the press at Asimov's. I only got my hands on that issue last week so any illusion of my plagiarizing from HIM is moot. I will say that Greg used the very same biographical sources for his lead character in the novella, and it was just the most freaky thing to see. In ORACLE, the genius Robert Stoney escapes his society and follows a brilliant and spectacular career instead of court-ordered mutilation and suicide.
I only wish that Steve had followed such a better path with us along with him - ORACLE made it possible for a brilliant mind to escape society and doom, and RADIANT SOULS - I think - served more to lay it to rest in peace.
Rest in peace, Steve.
[Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.]
~On this date a good friend of mine, possibly the smartest person I've known, passed away.
I met Steve Arlow in 1986 via my wife Shalla, while all of us were at MSU. Back then we hung out in Bryan Hall between dinner and sleep, and a fair number of people had made a regular D&D session out of weekends at Shalla's dormroom. I was an import - an underachiever horning in from Armstrong Hall across the way.
Steve struck me right off as singularly brilliant, thoughtful and ... okay, I can say with little doubt that he was truly sick and twisted even then. Anyone who could score that low on the Purity Test of days gone by would know that. Suffice it to say that he walked his own path, and that he never really got together with anyone since is really the saddest part of all. He kept in touch through that wave of graduations, and joined a veritable exodus to Ann Arbor afterward, where our social circle now blossomed (festered?) though he ended up doing so from Farmington for the most part. Even still, he was there. A strong voice in fandom, he 'got deep' in both the Stilyagi Corps and the fledgling Michigan Fandom community - even becoming one of the first and more enthusiastic Pinata Rider booster and vociferous member of their Ecircles sub-cult. So we'd never really lost touch.
Despite the sometimes fatalist and dour demeanor he had for a fraction of the time, he seemed to make the very best of all his hardships, and that is what made his death such a shock to me and a lot of people I know. We... seemed to know so little about a man who we thought we knew so well. A man who knew so much.
Anyway, the most significant people in our lives tend to leave the strangest legacies, and though this post is dated at the time of his passing, I want to relate a story that I hope keeps his memory fresh, and puts a little light on the subject of losing close friends.
A few months after this date, a few of Steve's closest friends got together and set about redistributing Steve's enormous book collection. I managed to get there in time to help organize the display, which I tell you was staggering. One of the books that I could not let get away (the majority of my take was reference and language guides) was the biography of Alan Turing, entitled ENIGMA (by Andrew Hodges). In fact I recall having to arm-wrestle Larry Kestenbaum for it; he relented when I told him it was for a project I was working on and that I would give it up afterward.
A curious coincidence was that I was very much ready to go online and buy the book, because I was working on a ghost story - the beginnings of which I had actually dictated to text with Viavoice and which seemed promising. The premise was to have been an encounter between a suicidal teen and the ghost of an elderly genius who'd just died of natural causes. That they could meet at all was a matter of 'brilliant' or radiant minds that thought along the same wavelength regardless of distance, like the ultimate radio frequency tuning only during near-death experiences. I chose as the subjects Alan Turing, whose lifestyle I'd only read about on Hodges' web-published excerpts, and the ghost of Thomas Edison. Needless to say, getting the book in hand was a boon.
It is a bit spooky that I inherited this book from the very person who inspired the story in the first place. Alan's death was also a bizarre and unsolved suicide, very close indeed.
Rather than being haunted, however, I became hopeful. By the end of the year I'd gotten the story written and it was in a submission-ready draft by maybe mid-2000, and it entered the postal circus that was my submissions process for my short fiction. The turnaround time for each sub was around a month, so I was pretty sure the story wouldn't come up for air for about a year, like many of the others I'd shopped at the same time. Meanwhile I'd busied myself with THE JAM.
Chrismas Eve 2001 I finally got copy and an acceptance for RADIANT SOULS, in Lost Worlds edited by Holley Drye. In her letter (profusely apologetic for not being able to notify me sooner) she stated the story was beautiful and that it ran in the October 2001 issue. It was a very pleasant holiday gift, and I owe it - my first fiction print publication credit - to Steve Arlow.
*The concept of radiant souls gets spookier. At the same time I was writing the story, Greg Egan's ORACLE hit the press at Asimov's. I only got my hands on that issue last week so any illusion of my plagiarizing from HIM is moot. I will say that Greg used the very same biographical sources for his lead character in the novella, and it was just the most freaky thing to see. In ORACLE, the genius Robert Stoney escapes his society and follows a brilliant and spectacular career instead of court-ordered mutilation and suicide.
I only wish that Steve had followed such a better path with us along with him - ORACLE made it possible for a brilliant mind to escape society and doom, and RADIANT SOULS - I think - served more to lay it to rest in peace.
Rest in peace, Steve.
[Everybody Hurts - R.E.M.]
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