I’d always assumed suicide, but I just realized this was an assumption. A quick look in the Encyclopedia of SF didn’t tell me. I figure someone out there knows.
Thanks,
Lao Tsu
IIRC, it was a heart attack suffered while shoveling snow.
I seem to recal that it was a car accident, but I could be wrong.
From here:
“In 1958, at the young age of 35, C.M. Kornbluth died of a heart attack after shoveling snow and then running to catch a commuter train.”
I’ve gat a collection of his short stories.
He was fun!
I think he’d of enjoyed hearing that.
At the age of sixteen, Kornbluth wrote sharper, pithier short stories than most professional writers twice his age. Terrific talent.
Ahhh! I just turned 35! I write SF (never published)! Good thing there’s no snow here…
Hey Revtim, you’e gonna miss your train!
Not this August, no. Christmas Day.
The immediate cause of Kornbluth’s death was a heart attack, but his friend Frederik Pohl wrote that Kornbluth’s heart had been damaged when he fought in WWII.
Probably not. People that knew him have said that Kornbluth, while undeniably talented, had a strong bitter streak and generally disliked people. Isaac Asimov, for one, wrote that looking back on their relationship he now realizes that Kornbluth never really liked him.
Thanks everyone. Particularly RealityChuck.
Oh, well, I was slightly off.
Issac Asimov, writing as “A” in The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, proclaimed that, in his youth, he (Asimov) was determined never to grow old. He claimed to have held to that plan until a friend actually succeeded in doing so, by dying when he was thirty-five. Asimov then decided that growing old was better than the alternative.
I have always assumed that Kornbluth was the friend cited.
IIRC, he said that he damaged his heart carrying a .50 cal MG in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.