Paul Williams at the 1988 American Booksellers Association convention. Photo by and copyright © 2013 Andrew Porter.

Author, editor, publisher, and literary executor Paul Williams died 27 March 2013, finally succumbing to the early-onset Alzheimer’s he incurred after hitting his head during a bicycling accident in 1995 at just 47. Born 19 May 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, he founded Crawdaddy!, the first national magazine of rock music criticism, in 1966. He was also an early fanzine publisher, founder of the Philip K. Dick Society, and instrumental in spreading the gospel of Philip K. Dick and also of Theodore Sturgeon.

In his obituary of Williams, Gollancz’s Malcolm Edwards writes, “you should honour him as one of the two principal figures who kept the name of Philip K. Dick alive in the decades following his death.  Paul was a close friend of Dick’s, and his 1975 Rolling Stone article ‘The True Stories of Philip K. Dick’ was the most significant piece of writing about him published during his lifetime.  (It later formed the basis of a book, Only Apparently Real, which was in turn the first book about Dick.)  When Dick died in 1982, Paul was named his Literary Executor, and he worked tirelessly in conjunction with Dick’s long-time literary agent Russ Galen (the other hero of this story) to keep his name alive.  Paul founded and ran the Philip K. Dick Society, which attracted hundreds of members in scores of countries.  The small publishing company he ran together with David Hartwell published Dick’s novel Confessions of a Crap Artist – the first time any of Dick’s non-sf novels from the 1950s saw the light of day.”

Edwards also says Williams “was equally enthusiastic about the work of Theodore Sturgeon, and edited the twelve-volume edition of Sturgeon’s short stories which will be appearing as SF Gateway eBooks during 2013 and 2014.”

Related articles previously published on SFScope:
Come Celebrate Legendary Rock Writer Paul Williams at Boo-Hooray (19 March 2013)