My friend Marcus Roberts wrote this obituary, and I wholeheartedly agree with everything he says here.
My friend Stefan Sasse sent me the news that Steven had died and I just started crying and couldn’t stop.
It’s been 24 hours now and I’m able to think a little about why that is.
For
me, his loss to the community of Ice & Fire is obvious - ours is a
world founded and defined by GRRM but explored and understood
politically, historically and strategically with genius by Steven. And
his coup chapters in ‘Race for the Iron Throne’ inspired an insane
multi-day, real time, 24 player simulation of Ned vs Cersei that was
wild fun!*
Less obvious to the world is the loss his death
represents politically. Steven was that most rare of people: a man with
fully worked out politics. He knew what he believed and why he believed
it and could tell you where the ideas came from and where they could
take us.
This manifested in his epic work, ‘People Must Live By
Work: Direct Job Creation in America from FDR to Reagan’. I had told him
how much I was looking forward to its sequel covering our current era
of more activist government involvement in the economy.
That’s a
serious point. Because the Left is still too weak on political economy
right now and the Right is still too strong. Steven was one of the best
minds we had at thinking through a coherent next chapter in the Left’s
political economic thinking. I think his intellectual and policy legacy
will be greater than even he perhaps realised.
The last reason
why his death hit me so hard is a personal one: I can’t think of being
in New York without seeing Steven. We’d meet in a West Side dive bar,
have a beer than get a cab to ‘Nick’s Pizza’ on 94th and 2nd. All the
time I’d be asking him questions, all the time he’d be talking, all the
time I’d be learning - and then marvelling at this brain that
represented for me the very best of geekery and nerdery alike.
I miss you Steven. I’m so sorry you’re gone. Thank you for your brilliance and friendship.
