I published a poem by Gene van Troyer 25 years ago in Last Wave, but I never got to know him as well as I would have liked. That’s primarily because he moved to Japan (sometime in the mid-’70s, I think), and so our paths never crossed on the con circuit.

The one time we got to sit and talk at length was at the Worldcon in Yokohama, at which we spent an undisturbed hour in the SFWA suite catching up on each other’s lives and promising to spend more time together during some future trip to Japan. Sadly, that won’t be happening, as he died July 17, 2009 of cancer. Here we are back in 2007.

Here’s what SFWA had to say about him. He seemed like a nice guy, and I wish I’d gotten to know him better. I plan on pulling down some of his poetry today and spending some time remembering him.

Here’s one of his poems so you can do the same.

Here’s another.