I’m always eager to learn about a writer that I know nothing about. And thanks to Wired’s Steven Levy as well as Scott over at Polite Dissent, I got some insight into the late writer, William Tenn, who died on February 7.

Tenn was a pseudonym for Philip Klass, as noted in Levy’s tribute to him. I was struck by both Levy’s and Klass’ pieces due to their respective encounters with Klass/Tenn.

As a grad student, Levy studied with Klass:

I was one of those students, an English lit major in the grad program slowly grasping that I was not destined for academia. In his lengthy comment on the first story I handed in for his class, Klass began, “Well, at least you can write,” and proceeded to eviscerate almost every line of my work.

No matter — I could write! Klass helped get me an internship at the local newspaper — something not usually done for grad students. During my semester at the Centre Daily Times I covered a science fiction conclave held at the university and saw first-hand the massive esteem with which giants in the field like Frederick Pohl regarded Klass/Tenn. With his encouragement, I left State College with hopes of making a living with my typewriter. (Computers were a few years away.)

As a child,  Scott heard Tenn speak at a convention:

He was one of the last of the great Golden Age science fiction writers. He was also the first writer I ever saw at a convention. I was about twelve and had convinced my father to take me to Rovacon, a small science-fiction convention in the neighboring town of Roanoke, Virginia, where William Tenn was the guest of honor. I was having fun exploring the con and I only made it to the last ten or fifteen minutes of his talk, but immediately wished I had heard the whole speech. In the portion I heard, he was talking about the difficulties of time traveling. Not the scientific or technological hurdles, but the social ones. He mentioned how a man from just one hundred years ago would find it extremely hard to function in today’s society, and vice versa. Think of all the differences between now and 1910: Technology, certainly. Health and sanitation, too. But think of societal attitudes and how they’ve changed: Women’s lib. Civil rights. The U.N. Non-isolationist policies. A person traveling back to 1910 could quickly find themselves in trouble just mentioning some commonly accepted modern beliefs. At the age of twelve, I found this fascinating, and I still do. Now more than ever I wish I had made it the entire talk.

Scott’s recollection of Tenn’s take on time travel makes me want to read the man’s work. Fortunately, both posts direct me to good places to start my reading.

An impressive showing/collection of tributes from a number of people influenced or taught by Klass/Mann can be found at Tenn’s official website.