Last night, the first snow of this winter fell on us.
Last night, my friend Dave died in his sleep.
The more hours pass, the more I realize I've been mourning Dave for the past 10 months.
I've been mourning him since the moment his brother told us that he had been rushed straight from the ER to the ICU, and that there was a chance he wouldn't make it.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times Dave and I were in the same room.
It's one of those Internet friendships that started on a blog around 2009-2010 and went beyond the screen, if only on so rare occasions.
Dave was… So many things!
He had a brilliant mind and an encyclopedic knowledge of music, books, movies, TV shows, RPG systems. He loved old pulp and new pulp, classic fantasy and hard sci-fi, most kinds of horror, noir movies and Hong Kong action, screwball comedies and adventure flics. He had three movie podcasts with as many friends, because he liked to talk about the things he loved, and he loved so many things, Jesus, so many things!
He wrote for his two blogs, plus novels, short stories, non fiction, rpg material, a whole setting for Savage Worlds. He paid all his bills through his writing, which anyone can tell you is fucking HARD AS FUCK, even more so as an Italian writing in English.
I think I owe some of my sanity during the 2020 lockdown in part to the fact he asked me if I wanted to play with him and his group via non-zoom.
I said yes, immediately.
It became a staple of my weeks, that Friday meeting to play one rpg or the other, and if too many people were not present, to just talk about books and politics and life and tv shows.
Until February 2024 and the first bad news.
And now this news.
I've tried being optimistic, these past 10 months, because he was beating the odds again and again and again.
He was a lucky GM, rolling that impossible roll was par for the course for him.
Until, last night, it wasn't anymore.
I don't know what life is gonna be like now that he's gone. Can the world even go on without Dave in it? Without his brilliant mind and his wit and his voice?
He was a micropaleontologist and a Zen practitioner. He'd be the first one to tell me that yes, the world will go on, Earth has been through several mass extinctions, what is one little death gonna matter to the whole of it? Everything is temporary.
He'd probably say something cool, right now, or quote someone even cooler. Or maybe just talk about the need to let go, even when it's someone as cool as him.
I don't know.
I really don't want to have to discover what the world will look like, now that he's not in it anymore.
I will have to.
It's a new world to explore and chart.
I'm just so incredibly angry that I'll have to do that without my friend by my side, recommending books, or delighting in my hate for obnoxious people, or asking what my character is gonna do next. Life feels emptier already.
It's a weird kind of serendipity that someone just liked this post about some of the characters I got to play at a virtual table, when most of those games were GMed by Dave, and I'm on the way to Dave's funeral right now.
It's one of the selfish things I'll forever miss: playing some new game with him, being introduced to a new system or setting, and just have plain, old, wild and unbridled fun around a virtual table.
Ho conosciuto Davide Mana più di venti anni fa, tramite il blog che avevo a quel tempo e che si interessava di letteratura sotto varie angolazioni.
Davide era un paleontologo prestato alla scrittura (o viceversa), di un ingegno abnorme. Creatore di giochi di ruolo (a questo proposito avevo scritto un racconto con lui come protagonista); scrittore di fantasy, horror e derivati (ma sempre con la sua angolazione curiosa e personalissima); creatore di challenge letterari a cui ho partecipato anche io e partecipante a sua volta a progetti di scrittura condivisa (di cui ho immeritatamente fatto anche parte); traduttore di testi specialistici, romanzi e racconti.
Scriveva sia in italiano che in inglese e ha pubblicato decine e decine di articoli specialistici di paleontologia e di letteratura, forse più per il mercato anglofono che per quello italiano. Per non parlare dei romanzi e dei racconti di quasi ogni genere, che ha regalato a noi avidi lettori.
La morte di Davide è uno di quei casi in cui ti spiace leggere la notizia forse anche più di quella di un conoscente in carne e ossa.
Malato da tempo, da diverse fonti apprendiamo della scomparsa di questo autore. - Leggi tutto l'articolo e guarda le foto su Fantascienza
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