File 770
Issue 142: June 2003
Harry Warner Jr. passed way on February 17, 2003 at home - the 423 Summit address indelibly etched on fannish memories by his thousands of letters of comment. The cause of Harry's death at the age of 80 was not reported, however, letters written last winter reported how illness kept him away from fanac for weeks at a time, and Harry speculated in a letter this January that his health might force him to move to assisted living.
Harry Warner was a superb fanwriter and a prolific correspondent. I agreed with Tim Marion when he wrote: "Since Harry is one of my very favorite fanwriters, the temptation is to put his writing into 10-point type and my own into 8-point…." Harry undertook to comment on every zine he got, sometimes writing that he felt guilty for falling behind or missing an issue. He answered neos' efforts as readily as anyone's, and many a clubzine devoid of any other appreciation for the editor's work boasted a solitary loc from Harry.
He was earnestly interested by anything from baseball to opera. He was fandom's leading historian, author of All Our Yesterdays and A Wealth of Fable. He was highly reclusive. Worldcons were spotlighted in his chronicles, yet he didn't go to them even when they were close to home. (He made an exception for Noreascon I, the 1971 Worldcon, where he was fan guest of honor). His legend as the irascible Hermit of Hagerstown was largely based on his own description of these tendencies, laced with self-deprecating humor.
The other hallmarks of Harry's prose were the journalistic precision of his descriptions and his playful "idea-tripping" (Tom Digby's term for the fannish practice of applying twisted Campbellian logic to extrapolate an idea in an amusingly unexpected direction.)
The desire for precision served Harry well as a reporter on the Hagerstown Herald-Mail for 40 years, retiring in 1983. After Harry's death, former colleague Arnold Platou wrote an article marveling at the sudden discovery Harry had concealed from nearly everyone on the staff "that for most of his life his fascination with science fiction and science fiction fans had led him to write volumes of magazine articles and books on the subject, and that he was known to thousands of sci-fi aficionados throughout the world."
Harry won the Best Fanwriter Hugo in 1969 and 1972, and afterwards he wrote a very funny article for Granfalloon called "How I Fought For My Hugo." A Wealth of Fable garnered him another Hugo in 1993 for Best Non-Fiction Book.
On March 25, Rich and Nicki Lynch attended the "Orphans Court" hearing to allow police access to Harry's house to search for his will. Rich later learned that Harry's will had named a lawyer and a bank as his personal representatives, and left his house and all its contents to the Lutheran church that Harry attended. Letters by Harry accompanying the will indicated that the Eaton Collection of the University of California-Riverside should get his fanzines, and $10,000 was to be set aside for their packing and shipping. The official reading of the will was scheduled to take place on April 29.
Alhough the will provides for the fanzines to go to UC Riverside, Harry's letter in the February 2003 issue of DASFAx said, "I thought I had found a home for my fanzines, the University of California, but it has just acquired the Bruce Pelz fanzine collection and mine would duplicate to a major extent the Pelz holdings." So the ultimate fate of his collection remains to be seen.
Harry inspired many cartoons by that other omnipresent fanzine contributor, Bill Rotsler. Most were intended to appear beside a Warner loc in the lettercolumn. Bill also drew one for File 770 whose joke depended on there being no Warner letter in the issue. Fortunately, it's already been published because, however timely, I would not enjoy using it now.
