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I first met George Hay
at Tynecon in 1974. He and Julia Baynes joined ASTRA, and I
suggested they form a London branch. Subsequently I put
George in touch with Andy Nimmo, Sandy Glover and others,
and it actually happened, in the heartland of the BIS from
which ASTRA had separated in 1963. Meetings were held at the
offices of Environmental Consortium, hosted by Gerry
Carter.
Nevertheless it was a
mixed blessing. Although the first ASTRA-London branch
generated some brilliant ideas, like the Futures Maze and
the WACY-2000 interstellar signalling proposal, it never got
its collective head round what ASTRA really was. When Sandy
Glover was asked what it lacked that we had, he replied,
"Gestalt". ASTRA-London went down to be replaced by a series
of organisations culminating in the Space Settlers with whom
we were reunited in 1992. As George was an Honorary Member
of Settlers, he then became one of ASTRA.
As Arthur C. Clarke
wrote of George, "What can you say about a man who has
pterodactyls on his notepaper?" The man who (long before the
Drabble Project or its less good Daily Telegraph 'Brian'
version), formulated and published a series of SF stories on
postcards, in the days when PC stood for that and not
personal computer or politically correct. His own
contribution to the series was to have appeared with these
tributes, but has gone missing - a rare (but not unique)
example of George as author rather than editor, but not the
first we've published. That was 'Another Kind of War', in
Asgard vol.1 no. 1.
It's as an editor that
George will be remembered. In 1974 he was already long
established with such anthologies as "The Disappearing
Future" (Panther, 1970). He was Chairman of the H.G. Wells
Society 1975-78, and persuaded publishers to bring a number
of Wells's works back into print including "Star Begotten",
"Men Like Gods" and "The Food of the Gods". He also led the
campaign to remove Wells's name from the film remake of
"Things to Come", which bore little resemblance to the
original.
In the late 70's he
signed up with Penguin to produce Pulsar, a series of
anthologies in which stories would be paired with science
fact articles. In Pulsar 1 Bob Shaw's outstanding Small
World was paired with Chris Boyce's The Skytank Portfolio.
My own contribution was to be The Politics of Near Space in
Pulsar 2. Unfortunately Penguin decided to terminate the
series and Pulsar 2 contained only the stories intended for
nos. 2 & 3. An abridged version of The Politics of Near
Space appeared in "The High Frontier", edited by Bob Low for
our 1979 exhibition at the Third Eye Centre, but George was
never one to let a good idea go. A full updated version
appeared (subtly edited) in the US magazine The World &
I in 1987, after George had convinced them that they needed
a set of articles by British SF writers. In the same year,
George persuaded me to go public with the 'Politics of
Survival', which is the basis of all my non-fiction work,
arranging for it to appear in Science & Public Policy -
narrowly scooped by Samo Resnik, who got it out in
translation in Slovenia one month before.
The Politics of Near
Space was written from the SF viewpoint, and that was always
George's first love. In particular he was a pillar of the
academic SF Foundation. I always thought that when the Big
One happened, be it ET Contact, asteroid impact, Armageddon
or the Sun exploding, the phone would go and George would
ask me, "How can we use this to benefit SF?" If there is
life after death, when whatever it is does happen George
will be mad that he missed it.
Although George was an
active ASTRA member only 1974-75, he influenced the society
in many ways. In the 1970's, for example, he formulated the
notion (a good one in my view) of a register of SF ideas, so
it could be consulted when amazing problems came up,
unforeseen in the 'real' world (like an cargo ferry
colliding with a space station). I suggested (and I still
think it would work) a letter code like the one James White
has for aliens in the Hospital Station stories. In this
case, a story about a Mir-Progress-type collision might be
coded S (pace) O (rbital) St (ation) A (ccident) C
(ollision)... so space programme managers (could immediately
access all SOStAC stories to see if they had any useful
suggestions - provided (and this was a problem George never
got his head round) one could persuade the managers, all of
whom just know intuitively that SF has no value, ever to
consult the Index in the first place.
George didn't buy my
shorthand codes for quick access. His own idea was nearer to
producing a summary of every story so one could do a word
search. The lady he assigned the task of summarising a
number of SF magazines as an example of what could be done
that way, was Lisanne Sutherland (as she then was), now
Lisanne Norman, who became an ASTRA member. At one of the
few SF meetings ASTRA's ever had, a writers' workshop we
hosted for the Glasgow SF Circle, Lisanne's piece for
discussion was an early chapter of the novel series she now
has in print. Lisanne left Scotland, but became Chairperson
of the Eastercon in Liverpool in 1990. She then asked ASTRA
to run the spaceflight programme for the Convention, which
had many ongoing effects on the society.
It's only now George has
gone that we start to see in how many ways he did influence
us. Not all good, it has to be said: but for George we might
never have met Gerry Carter, who hosted ASTRA-London
meetings at his Environmental Consortium. Gerry came up here
only once, but it was a disaster - in some ways ASTRA's book
programme has never recovered from the damage done that
weekend.
George too came up only
once, but that was quite different. He came to speak on 'The
Value of SF' at the High Frontier exhibition, and his
article on it was published in the Bob Low book. When I met
George off the train, I found him very concerned about race
riots in England. "This could tear the country apart." Not
here, I assured him. "No, no," said George, "I don't think
there's anything you could show me that would convince me it
won't happen here too." Having seen the Evening Times on my
way in, I left the taxi queue to buy one and walked back
holding it so George could see the banner headline,
"Scotland Welcomes the Boat People".
We then went up to the
Astronomy Project office, and had barely arrived when Willie
Fleming breezed in saying, "You must be George Hay. I
happened to be passing and thought I'd take you all to
dinner." It was a good visit for ASTRA and for Scotland;
sadly, we can't now fix up another.
In more recent years
George moved to Hastings and poor health seemed to slow him
down a little (but not much). Among his more recent projects
was editing the correspondence of the late John W. Campbell
Jr., a major influence on SF and spaceflight. The last one
involving me was an anthology of SF about SF, for which he
commissioned me to write a story about an SF convention - at
very short notice, as usual. With help from Jim Campbell and
Andy Nimmo I came up with 'Conventional Weapons', about an
SF convention on Mir 2, attended by (thinly disguised) very
wealthy right-wing American SF authors. It was written
before the break-up of the Soviet Union and was rapidly
overtaken by events. But even before that the UK publisher
had backed out after completion, and after the Soviet Union
break-up George tried to have the anthology published in one
of the newly independent satellite states, which would have
been ironic indeed. Nothing came of it and probably never
will now, but if George was still around, I wouldn't be
taking bets.
George is survived by
Mollie Gillam, to whom he dedicated Pulsar 1 "with all of
love" (a quotation from James Blish), and to whom the ASTRA
Council extends its deepest sympathy.
-o0o-
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 PAUL
GRANT
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GERRY
CARTER
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