There have been four men in my life who I have considered to be beyond brilliant. One was my father, the second a professor at my law school, another an inventor and space visionary, and the fourth was my friend, Dr. Michael Engelberg. I first met Michael at what would become our traditional meeting at Hop Li Seafood Restaurant in L.A.’s Chinatown.
Michael was an oncologist at Cedar’s Sinai, a brilliant physician, but he was also a movie producer. He had made Heinlein’s Puppet Masters for Disney, and he absolutely loved the Wild Cards series. That’s how we ended up meeting because he wanted to make a Wild Cards movie. It’s because of Michael that George and I got to pitch directly to Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time.
Michael was a science fiction fan from childhood and he had an almost complete run of all the magazines from the forties to the present. He read voraciously. He liked my work because he was a committed secularist. Science guided him in all things, but he was also the kindest most caring person I’ve ever met.
We had a lot in common. He loved horses and had gotten to ride in his teenage years. We loved classical music and opera. He convinced me to give Wagnar’s Ring Cycle another try. And we both loved the Burroughs Mars books. We got that the first three Mars books were a grand romance which is why he eventually brought me into his efforts to bring A Princess of Mars to the big screen. Alas, our version of the movie didn’t work out, but the friendship was always there.
We loved movies and with other dear friends we would often go to see a film and then have dinner after at the Farmer’s Market. Michael was a passionate liberal, so much so he made me look almost like a Republican and we had some spirited debates over the dinner plates.
If you read my Imperials books 3 and 4 you will find him and his charming and vivacious wife Kathy being “Tuckerized” within their pages.
Any health issue I might have Michael made sure I got the care I needed both here in New Mexico and at Cedars. He cared for all of us in his circle of beloved writers.
Covid has robbed me, but it’s robbed so many of us who loved and admired him. The hardest part is knowing that he didn’t need to die. That’s going to take a long time for me to deal with and maybe, someday, accept.
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