Leonard Nimoy, 1931-2015

Oh, hell. I was fearful, when I heard he'd been hospitalized. He utterly owned Spock, of course, but he did a lot more.

I got to speak to him once, when I was working at Acclaim and we approached him about writing an introduction to a Classics Illustrated SF compilation we were talking about. I was somewhere else in the office when I got hailed over the PA: "Madeleine, you have a phone call at your desk. It's... Leonard Nimoy?" When I answered, there was this voice that was so familiar--except that instead of speaking with Spock's precision, this was a man who said "Um" a lot, and thought the idea I was pitching was "really cool," and was both friendly and enthusiastic. The cognitive dissonance was striking. Sadly, the CI program (and Acclaim) shut down before I could work with him. But I still remember that voice.