Alice Turner, goodbye

Oh, my.  I just saw Alice Turner's name up on sff.net. with a flower next to it.

Alice was an editor at Playboy who bought a few stories from me.  She really went to bat for me a couple of times.

She once accepted a story, "Graves," but her own managing editor rejected it, saying it was "too gross" for Playboy.  Maggots, I think.  She tried to sneak it in a year later, but he sent it back with a note saying it was still too gross. So I sent it over to F&SF, with Alice's blessing.  Ed Ferman took it, and it went on to win the World Fantasy Award for best fantasy story of the year, and the Nebula as well.

I finished a novelette, "Feedback," just before the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago.  The night before the convention started, we went to the Playboy headquarters for a cocktail party.  Alice was there, of course, and I told her I'd just finished a great story, but I wasn't going to send it to her:  She'd never printed a story that long unless it was by Norman Mailer or someone, and Playboy wouldn't do a story with a homosexual male protagonist.

"Listen to me, Haldeman," she said, waving a cigarette dangerously close to my eyes.  "There's only one person in the world who can tell you what a Playboy story is, and that's me."

She bought it right away, perhaps to prove her point.

She had a keen editorial eye and a marvelous laugh.  Gay and I always looked forward to dinner with her whenever we were in New York.

She will be sorely missed.

Joe