Just heard of the passing of Guy Lillian last night at the age of 76. No cause has been mentioned but he'd been dealing with severe gastric problems and Parkinson's Disease for some time. Lemme tell you a little about Guy…
Guy was a retired lawyer (mostly a public defender) and a prominent figure in science-fiction fandom in the southern states. Many years earlier, he was a prominent figure in comic book fandom, gaining notoriety for his appearances in comic book letter columns, especially in DC Comics and especially in the ones then edited by Julius Schwartz. Since I was often in those same letter columns, people somehow assumed we were friends but we didn't meet until one day in the early seventies at some comic book convention in New York. Here's a photo I took of Guy with Julius Schwartz that day…
Guy is the one on the right, of course, but in an e-mail that I think was our last communication some years ago, he mentioned the photo and joked how he now looked more like Julie.
In the mid-seventies, Guy parlayed his connections from those letter column appearances into a job at DC Comics, assembling (ironically) letter columns and doing miscellaneous editorial work. He was starting to move towards writing comics when he decided that that profession (and New York) were not for him. He moved, married, got his law degree and expended his fannish energy towards s-f. We kept vaguely in touch but not for many a year. I remember him as a very, very bright guy and it's always sad to lose someone like that.