Tom Purdom, Heart of Philadelphia

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Photo by Sally Grotta

This is very hard for me to write. So please excuse its infelicities. I knew this man for a full fifty years.

Tom Purdom is dead. Not enough people will know what a loss this is. While he was as vivid and eccentric an individual as any of the rest of us, he absolutely refused to promote himself. I think he believed it was ungentlemanly. But those who knew him, cherished him.

Tom was the very heart of Philadelphia science fiction long before I came to town in 1974. He and his socially elegant wife Sara Purdom had monthly open houses where all the SF community was welcome--even rowdies like Gardner Dozois and myself. They two served as role models for Marianne and me. 

His gatherings were as glittery events as our crew ever saw. I recall Milton Rothman discussing the physics of nuclear-powered aircraft, and I most vividly remember Jack McKnight (who machined the first Hugo trophies in  his garage) pretending to steal our then-infant son Sean at one of these soirees.

Tom had three careers: First as a science fiction writer (he published his first two stories in 1957). Then, after he was squeezed out of the field by commercial forces, as a freelance writer specializing in biological and medical matters, chiefly for hospitals and universities. When Gardner Dozois became editor of Asimov's, one of his ambitions was to get Tom writing SF again. Under Gardner's prodding, he wrote "A Proper Place to Live," which, if unsold, could serve as a love letter to his wife Sara. Gardner bought it and Tom responded with a series of ambitious stories which put him in direct competition with the best of that era's young writers. "Fossil Games," a Hugo nominee, was my favorite (and in my opinion one of the best stories of the decade) but it was preceded and followed by many stories that were almost as good.

Tom was opinionated and a natural contrarian. Once, I told him I had decided to take his advice on some particular matter and he immediately told me why I shouldn't. But there was never any anger in our disagreements. They were more in the nature of a game, something done for the intellectual fun of it. 

He was also a strange combination of stoic and epicure. When his publisher told him that his half of a paperback double hadn't sold as well as the other half (and paid him accordingly) he refused to challenge that, because gentlemen took their lumps without complaining. But he also arranged his life to maximize the three great pleasures in his life: family (particularly his wife Sara, to whom he was devoted), witty conversation with interesting people, and what he called "sitting in a room where musicians were making music surrounded by people who like to  sit in rooms where musicians are making music." His gig as a classical music critic allowed him the luxury of never having to listen to recorded music. 

Tom was always worth listening to, always interesting, always full of new ideas. If you knew him, you wished he lived next door to you. If you didn't know him... Well, maybe you should read some of his stories. He was a good man and a very good writer. He worked to make this world a better, more civilized place.

Vaya con dios, Tom. You leave a great many people heartbroken by your absence. But I guess that's the price of your presence in the first place.

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