Editorial

I’ve had a few different plans for this editorial.

First, from a distance, was a long-standing notion to celebrate this forty-second issue of Mythaxis Magazine by making it all about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I still remember on an almost visceral level the laughing fit I had at the way Douglas Adams described Ford Prefect getting put out of his stride when Arthur Dent met, it turned out, Zaphod Beeblebrox for the second time. I even reread that trilogy in five parts over the last year, finding it not to be what I remembered in a number of ways – but I have other people doing the book reviewing around here, no need to slide another one in on the quiet.

More recently, I considered writing about my experience of Eastercon 2025, maybe making some general observations about genre conventions and awards and ceremonies and so on along the way. However, after a little reflection, I decided that’s not a great idea either. Maybe you’re into them, maybe you’re not, but (as Jack Nicholson once said) I’m somewhere in the middle myself, so I doubt I’d deliver any startling insights that would swing the global balance of opinion one way or the other.

But then, very recently, I learned of the sad passing of our long-time contributor Les Sklaroff, and there stopped being any question about what I would really want to write.

Les was born in London and educated at the University of Edinburgh (despite, he claimed, spirited resistance). He later hitch-hiked abroad, basking in Corfu, busking in Paris, and worked for an antiquarian bookseller before training as a teacher. After teaching in Scotland for ten years, he moved with his wife and children to the Isle of Wight and became an independent bookseller, specialising in Mervyn Peake, illustrated books, and modern first editions.

And somewhere along the way, he started writing. Over a period of twelve years, Les contributed many stories to this magazine. In his fiction, he assembled quirky, anecdotal reportage of “everyday” life in an unreal city, and occasional fleeting glimpses of the environs around it. He introduced readers to its very often eccentric inhabitants with a neighbour’s ear for gossip and an anthropologist’s eye for what makes them tick. To read one of these tales was to go for a ramble in a place you’ll never get to visit, often finding that its strangeness was highlighted by how just like anywhere else it could be. Likely all cities have their weird corners, maybe Snoak just flipped the ratio.

When we compiled his stories into their own space, Sketches of Snoak City, Les told us his late flowering as a writer was largely due to the friendly indulgence of Mythaxis’s original editor, Gil Williamson. I have no doubt that Gil cherished this facet of their relationship. When I took up the reins after Gil’s passing, I was delighted to welcome Les back to expand his unique guidebook when he had other glimpses of Snoak to share with us.

My first editorial here was to celebrate the life of Gil, touch wood this won’t be my last. But I would like to offer a salute to the memory of Les, with our thanks. If there is a place we go after we exit this world, we can only hope it is half as vivid and interesting as the one he created.