I know, I know, I'm out the door. But I just wanted to briefly note the passing of Mike Levy, who died on Monday. Locus have a brief overview of his career, which included a term as president of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, a role as an editor for Extrapolation, and research on a variety of topics in children's, YA, and SF literature.

For us, he was a reviewer. I met him during that 2007 trip to Wiscon I mentioned in my editorial, and then Sherryl Vint put us in touch after I managed to forget/lose his email address somewhere between Wiscon and home. He had reviewed for us on a regular basis ever since, as you can see from his contributor page, which means he worked with three different reviews teams: you know someone's worth reading if they survive that many transitions, and Mike was, with a generous but rigorous style that always managed to explain why he had found a particular book to be worth his time. (Or, less commonly, not.) He was a pleasure to edit, open to comment but clear about his intentions. And something I particularly enjoyed was his willingness to create dialogue with other critics: see, for instance, his 2008 review of two novels by Gregory Frost, which took issue with some comments in a review of the same by John Clute, and which was in turn cited by Clute in his most recent column for us.

We interacted a little outside the magazine, and though I couldn't say I knew him well, I'll miss him. Strange Horizons will miss him. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.