I was quickly skimming the front matter to the newly arrived Year’s Best Science Fiction earlier today to learn from Gardner Dozois’ Summation whether there was anything I’d missed in 2008. When I got to the list of people who had died since the previous Year’s Best, I thought, hmmm, I wonder how many of them were older than me when they passed and how many were younger? (What can I say? Maybe once you turn 50, those sorts of things pop to mind.)

So as I continued skimming, not really counting, but just getting a general idea, feeling rather light-hearted and thinking it might even be amusing to report the split in numbers over on my Twitter feed, I was unprepared to come across this (click to view at a more readable size):

I was stunned to see that my father, who died on January 27, was on the list. I never expected to see such a thing, especially not mere months after his death, and so, three days before Father’s Day, I wept.

Thank you, Gardner, for including Dad.