Jim Baen, page 48
Jim spent his military career in Bavaria where he worked for the Army Security Agency as a Morse Code Intercept Operator, monitoring transmissions from a Soviet callsign that was probably a armored corps. One night he determined that 'his' Soviet formation was moving swiftly toward the border. This turned out to be an unannounced training exercise--but if World War III had broken out in 1960, Jim would've been the person who announced it.
Jim entered CCNY on the GI Bill and became a Hippie. Among other jobs he managed a Greenwich Village coffee house, sometimes acting as barker as well: 'Come in and see tomorrow's stars today!' None of the entertainers became tomorrow's stars, but that experience of unabashed huckstering is part of the reason that Jim himself did.
Jim's first job in publishing was as an assistant in the Complaints Department of Ace Books. He was good at it--so good that management tried to promote him to running the department. He turned the offer down, however, because he really wanted to be an SF editor.
In 1973 Jim was hired at Galaxy and If magazines when Judy-Lynn Benjamin left. He became assistant to Ejler Jakobson, who with Bernie Williams taught Jim the elements of slash and burn editing.
Unfortunately, this was a necessary skill for an editor in Jim's position. The publisher wasn't in a hurry to pay authors, so established writers who could sell elsewhere preferred to do so. Galaxy and If published a lot of first stories and not a few rejects by major names. Material like that had to be edited for intelligibility and the printer's deadline, not nuances of prose style.
Apart from basic technique Jim had very little to learn from his senior, who shortly thereafter left to pursue other opportunities. Jim's first act as editor was to recall stories that his predecessor had rejected over Jim's recommendation. When in later years I thanked him for retrieving the first two Hammer stories, Jim responded, ''Oh, David--Jake rejected much better stories than yours!" (Among them was Ursula K LeGuin's Nebula winner, The Day Before the Revolution .)
Ace Books, in many ways the standard bearer of SF paperback publishing in the Fifties, had fallen on hard times in the Seventies. Charter Communications bought the company and installed Tom Doherty as publisher. Tom hired Jim to run the SF line. The first thing the new team did was to pay Ace's back (and in some cases, way back) royalties. By the time the famous SFWA audit of Ace Books was complete, the money had already been paid to the authors; a matter of some embarrassment to the SFWA officers who were aware of the facts.
Ace regained its position as an SF line where readers could depend on getting a good story. (To Homer, that was the essence of art; not all writers and editors of more recent times would have agreed.) As well as pleasing readers, the Ace SF line made money for the company; unfortunately (due to decisions from far above the level of publisher) SF came to be the only part of the company that did make money. Tom left Ace in 1980, founded Tor Books, and hired Jim to set up the Tor SF line.
Which Jim did, following the same pattern that had revived Ace: a focus on story and a mix of established authors with first-timers whom Jim thought just might have what it took. It worked again.
In fact it worked so well that when Simon and Schuster went through a series of upheavals in its Pocket Books line in 1983, management decided to hire Jim as their new SF editor. Jim thought about the offer, then made a counter-offer: with the backing of two friends, he would form a separate company which would provide S&S with an SF line to distribute. S&S agreed and Baen Books was born.
Jim used the same formulas with his new line as he had at Ace and Tor, and again he succeeded. If that were easy, then past decades wouldn't be littered with the detritus of so many other people's attempts to do the same thing.
Even more than had been the case at Ace and Tor, Jim was his own art director at Baen Books--and he really directed rather than viewing his job as one of coddling artists. Baen Books gained a distinct look. Like the book contents, the covers weren't to everyone's taste--but they worked.
Jim had the advantage over some editors in that he knew what a story is. He had the advantage over most editors in being able to spot talent before somebody else had published it. (Lois Bujold, Eric Flint, John Ringo and Dave Weber were all Baen discoveries whom Jim promoted to stardom.)
Furthermore, he never stopped developing new writers. The week before his stroke, Jim bought a first novel from a writer whom Baen Books had been grooming through short stories over the past year.
The most important thing of all which Jim brought to his company was a personal vision. Baen Books didn't try to be for everybody, but it wa s always true to itself. In that as in so many other ways, the company mirrored Jim himself.
When Jim called me on June 11, he told me he was dying. I thought he was simply having a bad interaction among prescription drugs. Though the stroke that killed him occurred the next day in hospital, Jim was right and I was wrong--again.
After that opening, Jim said, "I'm just going to say it: we've known each other all these years and you seem to like me. Why?"
That's a hell of a thing to be hit with out of the blue. Jim had always known that he was socially awkward and that he not infrequently rubbed people the wrong way, but it wasn't something we discussed. (And it's obviously not a subject on which I could be of much help.)
If I'd been a different person, I'd have started out by listing the things he did right: for example, that I'd never met a more loving father than Jim was to his children (Jessica Baen, 29, Jim's daughter with Madeline Gleich, and Katherine Baen, 14, Jim's daughter with Toni Weisskopf). Being me, I instead answered the question a number of us ask ourselves: "How can you like a person who's behaved the way you know I have?"
I said that his flaws were childish ones, tantrums and sulking; not, never in my experience, studied cruelty. He agreed with that.
And then I thought further and said that when I was sure my career was tanking--
" You thought that? When was that?"
In the mid '90s, I explained, when Military SF was going down the tubes with the downsizing of the military. But when I was at my lowest point, which was very low, I thought, "I can write two books a year. And Jim will pay me $20K apiece for them--"
"I'd have paid a lot more than that!"
And I explained that this wasn't about reality: this was me in the irrational depths of real depression. And even when I was most depressed and most irrational, I knew in my heart that Jim Baen would pay me enough to keep me alive, because he was that sort of person. He'd done that for Keith Laumer whom he disliked, because Laumer had been an author Jim looked for when he was starting to read SF.
I could not get so crazy and depressed that I didn't trust Jim Baen to stand by me if I needed him. I don't know a better statement than that to sum up what was important about Jim, as a man and as a friend.
--Dave Drake
Toni Weisskopf and Dave suggest that people who wish to make a memorial donation purchase copies of THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN and donate them to libraries or teenagers of their acquaintance.
Remembrances of Jim's life will be held at
Trinoc*Con in Raleigh, NC Saturday, July 22 and
Lacon IV, the Worldcon, in Los Angeles, CA in August.
Comments and remembrances may be left at:
Baen's Bar (http://bar.baen.com) in the "In Memorium" conference or
The Universe forums (http://www.baensuniverse.com/bbs) in the "In memorium" forum.
A Pocket History of MacroEngineering: The First Millennium
Written by Gregory Benford
Illustrated by Adam Burch
From the standpoint of a person in that distant past age around the year 2000, the central issues of the next thousand years would seem bizarre. But then, the previous millennium would have looked outrageous to either a king or a peasant peering forward from the year 1000. This Pocket History contains Historical Highlights, in a form intelligible to all forms of humans, even down to Traditional Classic Body Types of circa 2000.
The ebb and sway of political factions, and then of species-based opinion, should not obscure humanity's steady march. There was an ebb and sway to the human prospect, mostly about how much we should weigh upon our world. As the centuries rolled on from 2000 A.D., the multiplying human forms moved toward greater control of their environment. But they did not do this without constant voices that doubted the wisdom of it.
This has been a theme of our species since we separated from the chimpanzees some six million years ago:
* * *
2000-2150: The Earth Stewardship Era
In the latter half of the 21st Century the runaway greenhouse effect caught everyone's attention, especially after a billion died of the effects. This forced Green Puritans to consider planetary management. Warmed-over TwenCen objections to wise, planned human intervention faded as the true, already existing impact of human actions became obvious.
Humanity had been unthinkingly altering its world for millennia. Ice core samples showed that this began around 1000 B.C. with agriculture, which destroyed forests, released carbon dioxide and cut off the ice age that had kept humanity in poverty. To be sure, the early empires destroyed much of their rich lands. Northern Africa and what was once called the Fertile Crescent all became deserts. But the urge to make the world better, or at least distant, was strong. We were the breed of chimpanzee that restlessly moved over the horizon, after all, seeking fresh vistas.
Even so, resistance was strong. The Kyoto Accords of the early 21st Century had utterly failed to constrain the rising load of greenhouse gases. By 2060, amid storms and droughts that afflicted so many, the only argument was over whether thoughtful action was better than rash measures.
In any case, Stewardship soon became essential, following the several human diebacks in the tropical nations. Most of the oil was gone and replacement oil drawn from tar sands loomed as a mega-polluter. The planet needed cooling, fast.
Changes of cities' reflectivity eliminated their "heat island" effect, cutting air conditioning costs—simply by using white roofs and streets, and planting trees. The next Stewardship Stages stimulated cloud generation over tropical oceans, where reflected sunlight efficiency is highest. This went hand in hand with political necessity. The economic uplifting of poverty regions followed, and tropical manufacturing plants sent particle-rich plumes downwind, to grow clouds in daytime and fade at night.
Capturing carbon dioxide from the air, principally by depositing farm crop waste in the deep oceans, offset the fossil fuel burning of the developing nations. The crisis seemed to ebb.
Climate management became routine by 2140, but there was no rest for those weary of Stewardship. Other effects came into play, altering the planetary balance. Just as in the early 21st Century, early signs of a coming shift in climate—this time toward an ice age—met with disbelief. Radicals demanded new measures. Conservatives who profited from the current ideas opposed them.
Another long battle got fought out in the scientific community. Then government got involved, slowing down the debate. Yet another crisis loomed, the opposite of the last one. To avert this cooling trend and advancing glaciers meant reversing the solution—by spreading dark soil on polar caps. New atmospheric engineers suppressed the once billowy clouds in the tropics, letting those lands warm again.
The lesson was now clear. Earth had lurched first in one direction, then another. Human beings were the dominant ecological agent, like it or not.
Once taken up, guidance of the biosphere supporting 12 gigafolk could not be renounced, or else face the demise of whole societies. Geospheric Stewardship became the greatest moral imperative.
The Green Puritan movement was outlawed—but only for a while.
* * *
2200-2500: New Atmospheres on Two Worlds
Since Stewardship worked on Earth, why not afar?
As part of the general uplifting of humanity, we had begun gathering resources from beyond our moon. By 2100 metals had become harder to find in the Earth's crust, and more costly and damaging to extract. There were plenty of metals in the asteroid belt. Inevitably, we went to get them. Bringing them to Earth, smelting them in high orbits—all this helped fuel an expansion of the global economy.
But to support this industry demanded resupply of the Asteroid Anarchy from nearer that Earth—that is, from Mars. But working there was difficult, under a thin atmosphere and with little water.
Stewardship could apply there, as well.
* * *
The renegade Green Puritans tried to stage a revolt against the idea. The Red Mars Brigades used dire warnings and then terror to fend off the planetary engineers, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. Rocks, it turned out in the end, did not have rights.
Using the same dark soil deposition strategy on Mars melted the poles, releasing carbon dioxide and water. Discovery of Martian water reserves not too far beneath the red crust stimulated widespread pumping. These caused a quick greenhouse buildup in the thin atmosphere. That further melted some surface deposits, driving a slow accumulation of gases. Funded by the Fogg Foundation, this work continued until people could walk the surface wearing only pressure masks.
The Martian population spread across their arid lands, an area equal to the continents of Earth, with fresh vigor. They hunkered down each time a fresh, piloted comet came arcing in with new water. Robotic craft liberated these from the perpetual icebox of the far outer solar system. They fell down gravity's long gradient and came slamming into the upper Martian air, spreading moist wealth.
Good enough, but chilly Mars gets only half the sunlight of Earth. There is another spot at just the right distance from the sun, and near Earth, too. But with no air at all: the Moon.
For some time, lunar pioneers had been drilling their shelters. and uncovered deep ice beds. Venting of these made a thin atmosphere. Filmy clouds formed, the first in four billion years. This gave the pioneers an idea.
By that time the most valuable bulk commodity in the inner solar system had become light elements, gathered from cometary nuclei. The inner system is dry and at the bottom of a gravitational well, while at the top of the well, the outer system is wet with frozen ices. These swing in slow orbits between the vast cold bodies of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Slightly changing the velocity of an orbiting chunk of mostly ice and dirt could send it plunging down the well.
Harvesting such icebergs led to the "wild west" phase of water prospectors. For a small investment of velocity change, far "uphill" from the parched inner worlds, they could get rich. Their infalling rock and icebergs lit Earth's night skies with thousands of outgassing tails. Traders quickly sold these to development firms. Flown by their own gas pressures to landing sites, the dirty bergs dropped into the thin atmospheres of Mars and the Moon, blasting crater-basins. The new air of mostly water vapor changed quickly under the pelting of solar ultraviolet. Water gave hydrogen, which quickly escaped into space, leaving a growing bounty of oxygen. Add other active gases, released from the world's crust, and presto!—a new technology of atmosphere building.
Martian entrepreneurs quickly blew bubble domes, using the rims of impact craters as starters. These domes got outfitted with soils and cultured with nanotech and bacteria. Moisture came to the red plains that had not known running streams for billions of years. Designer plants sprouted beneath skies that roiled with their own evolving clouds. Where the sky had been black and star-filled, ruddy sunsets spread.
Earthside, in the desert nations now drained of their oil, immigrants looked skyward. They were used to dry lands and had little prospect on Earth now. Islam found a new frontier. In the scarred craters recently blasted by comets, domes rose with mosques at their centers. Condominiums opened within 100 days of impact. Miners, manufacturers and even tourists bought them. They even had real estate agents.
On the Moon, hundreds of comet heads slammed into the ancient plains of dark lava. The atmosphere grew from the billowing splash and spray of massive icy chunks. To have an Earthly sea level atmospheric pressure demanded deep, brooding cloudbanks. Since the moon's gravity is a sixth of Earth's, its atmosphere had to be six times thicker. Contracts penalized anything that reduced atmospheric pressure. The low gravity meant that gasses blew off readily into space; that was how the primordial Moon lost its first atmosphere in ten thousand years.
Throughout these decades of furious work, debates rose again about megaengineering. For many the issues were hoary with age. Hadn't humans settled this? But such debates dug deep into the collective psyches of these recent smart primates. The issues would never truly be settled.
The Human Hubris Party urged their Precautionary Principle and won elections for a while, but only on Earth. Moonies disliked being told what to do by the Big Brother in their sky. Earth had oceans; why couldn't Luna have at least seas?
Soon, it did. The water-rich Lunar air quickly evolved, helped along by new kinds of plants that could thrive in the dry moon's gravel. Still, the atmosphere leaked away with distressing speed. They could not keep resupplying moisture from the dwindling store in the icebox of the outer solar system.
