Alice K. Turner (1939-2015)

Editor Alice K. Turner, 75, died January 16, 2014 of antibiotic-resistant pneumonia.

Born 1939, Turner was the legendary fiction editor at Playboy, one of the most prestigious and highest-paying markets for short fiction, from 1980-2000. During her tenure, Turner published work by Terry Bisson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, and Dan Simmons, among other notable SF writers. Turner also helped nurture new writers, teaching at both Clarion and Clarion West.

She edited both Playboy Stories: The Best of Forty Years of Short Fiction (1994) and The Playboy Book of Science Fiction (1998). She co-edited Snake’s Hands: A Chapbook About the Fiction of John Crowley with Michael Andre-Driussi (2001; expanded as Snake’s Hands: The Fiction of John Crowley in 2003), and her shorter critical essays appeared in Asimov’s, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and Locus. She also wrote The History of Hell (1993), an expansive survey of how artists, authors, and theologians have discussed and depicted Hell.

See the February issue of Locus for a complete obituary and appreciations.