I am sorry to have to note that Tad Dembinski, a former editorial assistant at Tor Books, died suddenly last Friday.

Tad worked with David Hartwell at Tor, and was involved with various other Hartwell-related activities; I recall seeing him manning the NYRSF table at various conventions. He was an extremely affable guy, who left Tor in order to attend Yale's School of Organization and Management, from which he recently graduated. 8 He was 28.

As late as last night friends thought he had drowned. His brother and sister-in-law live across the street, however, and I spoke to them this afternoon. Turned out that the poor guy had suffered a heart attack.

He was vacationing with family at Cape Cod, standing in the water with his mother and an older brother, when he was stricken -- all of a sudden someone noticed him floating. He received care immediately, but appeared to have died at once. He had had a heart infection as a child, and the autopsy showed an enlarged aorta and valve damage.

Last time I saw him was in a bookstore in New Haven; I hadn't known he had gone back to school. We had a funny conversation discussing styles of editorial dysfunction at Tor, comparing notes from our complementary perspectives.

Tad was unmarried, but came from a large family -- he is survived by three older brothers and his parents.

--Gregory Feeley

Tad also served for a while as Managing Editor of The New York Review of Science Fiction.

Posted September 15, 1999