Today would have been my friend and colleague Eric Flint’s 76th birthday. Several months ago we lost Eric to whatever comes next. I know he didn’t believe that anything necessarily comes next; as a mutual friend said, he’d either been surprised at some new experience or would have been justified at having been right.
In any case, he’s not with us anymore, and there is an enormous Eric-sized hole in the universe that neither I nor anyone else can fill.
He left so many things unsaid, so many things undone. We were working on a book together; nowadays I say that I’m writing a book with Eric’s ghost, but truly it’s pretty much up to me – I’ve long since passed the end of the partially-completed outline he provided. I’ve written the parts he was going to write and now I’m on my own.
I cannot speak for everyone who liked and loved him, and wouldn’t try. I can only speak to what he meant to me. We met casually in the mid-2000s at some con or other, but we sat together at the NASFiC in North Carolina in 2010 and he threw me a lifeline: he offered me a chance to write in the 1632 universe. We wrote three books together, two of them in 1632 and one in an alternate America, and he was a joy to work with: cantankerous, demanding, detail-oriented and with high expectations, but always generous with advice and with credit. I hope to have learned that sense of fairness and graciousness should I have the opportunity to do for another what he did for me.
I miss his humor. I miss his insight. As far as our shared universe is concerned, I miss his leadership and his vision. He won’t see what we make of it going forward (or, maybe, he’ll see it all too well). If the latter is the case, I hope it meets his expectations.
He made me a better writer, and made me work harder to meet his expectations. I will never forget that.
His hat made it to DragonCon this year, and his spirit was with us. I will continue to try and meet those expectations.
Best of luck, my friend and colleague, wherever you’ve gone. I’ll never forget your friendship.
About Walter Hunt
