[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Much appreciated. I'll have to track down that story.

It's considered a classic, and has been widely anthologized, so it shouldn't be hard to find.

Lester was a "Golden Ager", who got his start in the pulps. He's also the Del Rey of Del Rey Books, a Ballantine Books spin-off imprint started by he and his late wife Judy Lynn Benjamin, who had been editor at Ballantine.

I knew him, years back. He was a fan, and was a regular attendee at East Coast SF conventions with his first wife Evelyn. He commented that he "missed being a preacher by luck", having been raised in a fire and brimstone Christian family, and brought that sort of passion to what he did.

He caused a flap at an early Tolkien conference, by presenting a paper where he suggested that the Red Book of Westmarch had been altered by Merry and Pippin, and that Smeagol/Gollum had actually survived the destruction of the One Ring and the fall of Barad Dur, and had eventually passed over the sea into the West as the first of the Ring Bearers.

That was Lester.
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Dennis