Ben Bova as editor

On pondering how on earth Ben Bova sold books, today I expended a few minutes on who this guy even is. Was, I should say; Covid took him from us late 2020. An ironic triumph of Science over Red Tape; but we are ahead of ourselves.

Bova made his name reviving Astounding as Analog. Bova agreed with Heinlein to disdain the old-era's Weird mix of Science Fiction and Fantasy. In the 1970s Bova stepped away from Analog and did Omni instead, which glossy magazine I'd once remembered as a weird-science Discover with psychics and guff like that, but was apparently more of a fiction publication, as I guess I should have re-remembered when Stephen King complained that Bova wouldn't accept his "Jaunt" shortstory on account the science wasn't hard enough.

There've been occasional attempts to #cancel Bova for the usual reasons. It seems in 1977 Bova had published an issue in which, excepting a serial (by George Martin!), all the stories were written by women. With his feminist-ally credentials safely in hand, or so Bova thought, in 1980 our man publicly complained that women were writing too many "unicorns and dragons" but not SF as intended, good and hard and veiny. There's some truth in - say - McCaffrey and Bradley running fantasy too-thinly veiled as SF. Although even in 1980 you'd think someone might have brought up Tanith Lee, "James Tiptree", and Ursula LeGuin(!). By then Octavia Butler and Cherry(h) were around too and, I think, not unknown. It seems that some in his audience had brought all that up, so maybe Bova was just artlessly trying to shame the newbies away from McCaffrey and Bradley.

All this tells me that Bova was a real force as an editor if not, perhaps, much of a writer. Reminds me a bit of Oppenheimer in fact.