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Wish Pete Crowther a happy sixtieth birthday!
Posted by Paul Raven on July 3rd, 2009 at 17:00
Hey there, PS fans – a word in your shell-like, if I may.
Tomorrow is July 4th, and Independence Day for those of you in the States. Appropriately enough for a great lover of American culture and fiction, it’s also Pete Crowther’s birthday. This year is his sixtieth.
I’ve not known Pete personally for that long – about a year and a half now, since I started working for PS – but I knew him by repute long before then. A lauded writer, a fearless publisher… there’s no shortage of professional plaudits for Pete’s work. But what stood out was the genuine personal affection so many people have for him.
Nowadays I’m lucky enough to know why that is. Pete really is a top character, the sort of guy who’d give you the shirt from his back while asking whether you’re sure that you don’t need the trousers too. And in an industry packed with obsessives, Pete stands out as someone who pretty much gave his life over to genre fiction as early as he could conceive of doing so. His home is literally lined with books and magazines stretching back to the fifties, collections of now-defunct genre publications so complete that they’d make an archivist green with envy, paperbacks and hardbacks and comics and more.
And he knows where each and every one of them is, where and when he got it, what he felt when he read it the first time. When Pete talks to you about fiction (and if you ever meet him, you can be assured that he will talk to you about fiction!) you’d be hard-pressed to imagine he was a man about to turn sixty. The light in his eyes is rare to see in people outside their twenties; genre literature is Pete’s own elixir of youth, maybe.
And even leaving that aside, he’s a man of incredible energy. If you knew the amount of time he puts into running PS (with Nicky’s equally tireless help), plus the time he spends writing his own fiction and editing anthologies elsewhere, you’d wonder how he finds the time to eat and sleep. I’m still in awe of it, frankly; I’ve seen him eat, but I’ve not seen him sleep yet. Maybe he doesn’t…
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that tomorrow is a special day for Pete, but he’s too bloody modest to make a big deal of it. But I’m damned if I’m not going to, and so I’d like to ask all of you loyal PS fans, customers and supporters to drop him a line and wish him a happy sixtieth birthday. You can leave a comment here, or you can send an email direct to editor[AT]pspublishing[DOT]co[DOT]uk – either will make his year, I’m sure.
Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend yourselves. :)
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Happy 60th Birthday, Pete. You rock!
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Happy Birthday! I will drink a pint or two in your honor tonight.
July 4th, 2009 at 8:33 am
The very happiest of birthdays to you, Pete!
July 4th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Happy Birthday! Hope you have a good one :)
July 5th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Wow! Many thanks, Paul. Shucks . . . I really don’t know what else to say. We had a fab day yesterday — lots of wonderful Mexican food (Nicky, you’re a a hero!), magaritas (from #2 son, Tim), wine, beers and a delightful 40-pint cask of fabulous cider (the latter courtesy of #1 son, Oliver) . . . all of which explains the delicate condition of my head this morning. We had endless conversations about books and comics, discussions with PS designer Mike Smith about alternate universes (particularly my own abiding interest in Shrodinger and his cat), with PS author Robert Edric (Gary Armitage) about the attraction of blue-highway US and of Americana generally (we’re both tiotally smitten with the place) and with Neil Scott (ex-guitarist from Felt and Everything But The Girl) about modern day music (and particularly Graham Coxon’s remarkable and indispensible album The Spinning Top) . . . and all the while with sounds old and new drifting across the garden. You should have been there. Maybe next time! Pete
July 5th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Happy Birthday. Pete. I hope to see you next year.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:48 am
Happy Birthday Sir! Continued health and joy in publishing! And thank you for republishing Ray Bradbury!
July 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Belated happy birthday!
July 8th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Happy birthday, Pete! Here’s to the next sixty (I hear they go faster)!
July 28th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Penblwydd hapus, Pete!