Kameron Hurley on the conspiracy of silence about NSB that let to the current situation

[james_davis_nicoll]

Everything authors knew about the rotten abuse at Night Shade was shared in private. With a few exceptions (Moon and Williams, most notably) no one was talking out loud about what was happening. The SFWA was accomodating and gracious and gave them chance after chance. We should have spoken up. All of us.

But we didn’t. Because these guys were “nice guys” we knew, not “big megacorp unknown entity.”

Comments

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Did Roger Zelazny actually die in poverty? I hadn't heard that before.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I was kind of wondering that myself. Or rather, did he die in poverty that was not caused by the fact that he died of cancer in the US's sucky medical system? Possibly combined with the fact that he ran off with a girlfriend and left his wife with their teenage kids and presumably owed child support?

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Whaaaat?!?!?!? If true, this certainly lowers my estimation of the man.

[timill]

Wiki says: "Zelazny was married twice, first to Sharon Steberl in 1964 (divorced, no children), and then to Judith Alene Callahan in 1966 (he had also been engaged to folk singer Hedy West for six months in 1961/62[2]). Roger and Judy had two sons, Devin and Trent (an author of crime fiction) and a daughter, Shannon. At the time of his death, Roger and Judy were separated and he was living with author Jane Lindskold.[4]"

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is what tavella meant to say, but 'ran off with a girlfriend' isn't the same thing as 'separated and living with another woman.'

[tavella.livejournal.com]

It may be a nicer way of saying it, but to my understanding it was not a mutually decided on breakup, so it's the same thing; they were 'separated' because he had left her and the kids for Jane Lindskold. Which y'know, I'm not going to tell anyone they have to stay with their spouse if they don't want to, but there were kids involved and he was damn well still responsible for them.

So if 'living in poverty' translates to 'it costs more to maintain two households than one and the courts were not interested in the children being the ones taking the resultant hit in living standards', that's a little different than 'dying in poverty because publishers are assholes'.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Though honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was simply that he was never more than a middle-market author (though a well-regarded one) and the market in the 90s had become less and less friendly to full-time authors in that class. I remember Spider Robinson having trouble dealing with the same collapse, and he lived in Canada where you have an actual medical system.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I certainly didn't intend to suggest that I believed he was rich. His books never crossed over to mainstream bestsellers, AFAIK.

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, if that's what actually happened, you're right. But my mom and dad are separated and there was never any hint of another man or woman and it was mutually agreed-upon as well (well, that's the official line. The truth is that as soon as the kids were all out of the house my mom let it be known she was not happy with the way he had been conducting himself for the last 25 years or so.)

And the wiki article doesn't clear this up. Not that I'm saying you're wrong. It's just that this is a pretty stiff accusation to make and I'd like to see some independent corroboration. Running out on the kids is not cool.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

As I said to jamesenge, it's entirely possible I have it wrong; the version I know was picked up from Amber gaming circles in the 90s, and while there were people who had contact with Zelazny none of them were close friends. So it's possible that the "fell in love with Jane Lindskold and eventually left his wife for her" version I heard is incorrect.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

...though there's a certain 'draw the veil over the timing' quality to this reminisce by Lindskold. And I ran into a comment by the late Marilee Layman about being at the convention where RZ and Lindskold "met and started their affair."

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Although it seems to me that much of the vagueness in that account is aimed at her own marriage, not Zelazny's. So it goes.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

As I understand the situation (I have no direct knowledge), Judith Callahan left Roger Zelazny, not vice versa. But, however they parted company, I think one needs to demonstrate that someone is a deadbeat; it's unfair to presume it.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Possibly! My knowledge is entirely third-hand and a decade and a half old, so I could be entirely wrong. And I certainly wasn't presuming he was a deadbeat, just that if he was taking a hit in living standards because he had child support to pay I didn't blame that on his publishers.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

Sorry--I misconstrued what you meant by "owed". But I'm not sure who was the custodial parent in this breakup, either. My vague memory (from the "..And Call Me Roger" sections of the Collected Zelazny) is that Callahan moved out. But I don't have them at hand to check.

[melita66.livejournal.com]

Let's have some birth dates on his children:

Devin: b 1971
Trent: b 1976
Shannon: b ? but called to IL bar in 2004

Zelazny died in 1995.

[ckovacs.livejournal.com]

No. Absolutely not. Zelazny did not die in poverty; that's a cruel urban myth.

I researched and wrote Zelazny's biography ("...And Call Me Conrad": The Literary Life of Roger Zelazny) which is contained within the six-volume THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ROGER ZELAZNY from NESFA Press. And to answer the other speculation below, Zelazny moved out to join Jane Lindskold. He separated but did not divorce. He was well off at the time of his death and had, for example, full medical insurance coverage, unlike many sf writers who cannot afford it and have to make use of the SFWA Medical Emergency fund. Just a few years before he'd had what David Hartwell termed an extraordinarily high advance for a trilogy of Amber novels; those books were so commercially successful that they became the five Merlin books. He was well off and supporting his family at the time of his death.