I met Victor Milán appropriately enough in a bookstore when he was nineteen. He had just returned from hitchhiking around Europe and I was working at the bookstore earning some money before I started law school that fall. Six feet two inches tall, bright blue eyes and golden hair, he definitely caught my attention. We fell to talking and he told me he had spent time Catalonia looking for his ancestors and he wanted to write a book that drew on that rich history. Fast forward to July of 2015 and the publication date of The Dinosaur Lords which melded dinosaurs, knight errantry and that touch of Catalonia.

But between that first meeting and Vic’s final novels and stories there are a lot of wonderful memories. I had read science fiction my entire life, but had completely missed out on fandom. Vic told me about our local S.F. convention, Bubonicon, and thus I discovered my real family. I reciprocated by pulling Vic into my world of music and he became a regular performer with the Albuquerque Civic Light Opera — yes he had a beautiful lyric baritone voice in addition to drop dead good looks, and a brilliant questing mind.

We hung out all through law school and my first years in practice. I went to autographing with him and he introduced me to Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen and Suzy McKee Charnas and like Victor these were the most fascinating people I had ever met. I confessed to him that I wanted to be part of his world and he said, “I bet you can write. And if you want to try I’ll help you.” And boy did he. He encouraged me and mentored me, read my first scribbles and gave me notes. For some reason we always met for these notes meetings at midnight at the Vip’s Big Boy on Fourth Street.

Which lead to more memories of Vic’s look of utter delighted amazement as a cavalcade of humanity would pass before our wondering eyes. There was one memorable night when we watched a pair of drunken shit kickers in their early twenties strive to set one another’s straw cowboy hats on fire while they were still wearing them. Vic’s boisterous laugh was wonderful to hear. And yes it drove home the other lesson that writers are the most shocking voyeurers. We’re constantly watching and eavesdropping for the one perfect character or moment or conversation we can pull into a novel.

In addition to helping me find my life’s work Vic introduced me to another fascination — pen and paper role playing games. He brought me to my first game at the home of Walter Jon Williams and another lifetime friendship was formed. We played Call of Cthulhu and Vic’s talent as an actor were on full display during those games. After a night of gaming the we had to cut short because Vic and I were heading to New York City the next day to meet our editor and agent we ended up on the airplane doing a post mortem on the game and we were babbling about how we had to blow up the tenement because it was filled with evil Cthulhu cultists and we really didn’t have a choice. I was in the middle seat. Vic had the window and he suddenly noticed our seat mate starting to look very nervous and that he was edging as far away from as the seat would allow. At which point Vic said loudly. “IN A GAME. A ROLE PLAYING GAME. ALL MAKE BELIEVE.” He then leaned in to me and whispered, “Now we find out if Federal marshals meet us when we stop in Chicago.” Fortunately that didn’t happen. Yes, it was a more innocent and less paranoid time.

There is one more thing you have to know about Vic and role playing games. Vic was the King of the Fumble. When you’re playing these games and in the GURPS system that we used if you roll a 99 or a 100 on your dice you have fumbled and terrible things will happen. The game master will roll to see what horrible thing and it can be anything from shoot self to shoot friend to fall down and lose a turn. We all knew that if it was an absolutely critical roll that would determine the outcome of a fight or supply our rescue and it was up to Vic to make that critical roll he was going to fumble.

A few years later George R.R. Martin became one of our New Mexico writers mafia and joined in our games. While George and I might be the god parents of Wild Cards Victor is probably its true father. One Christmas he gave George a game called Superworld and we all played it obsessively for a number of years. Once again Vic’s genius was on full display as he would suddenly start channeling the NPC’s that George would throw in our path — Mr. Tooth Decay Man comes to mind and the eulogy he spontaneously gave when Toad Man died had us all in tears. As I recall Walter Jon declared — “I can’t believe I’m crying over an f***ing Toad, and now I’m laughing all over again. But eventually George decreed we had to find a way to make money with this obsession and thus Wild Cards was born.

Vic and I wrote a novel together, The Runespear, that came out a one night (as in play until four a.m.) role playing game that Vic ran for several of us. He wrote a historical novel about Adah Menken, and westerns, and men’s action adventure books, and fantasy novels, and many, many Wild Card stories filled with beloved (Cap’n Trips) and terrifying (Mackie Messer) characters, and he crowned his career with his Dinosaur Lords series.
There are so many other stories I would love to tell you, about the time the Romance Writers tried to get him to be a Love Bandit and stop the train carrying writers to the conference and steal kisses…. But those will have to wait.

I miss you, Kid, but I figure you and Roger and Jack and Fred will be putting together a new anthology and you’ll probably have the angels rolling dice for a new game. Ad Astra, Vic.