Andrew Koenig

There has never been a blog post that I wanted to write less than this one.

I talked to John last night, and he said that Andrew's body was found in a park in Vancouver near where he had last been seen yesterday morning. He said and the news people are reporting that it appears to have been a suicide.

As far as news reports are concerned, I think we should take them with a grain of salt. For instance, this report says that Andrew's father, Walter, played Chekov in the original Star Wars movie, which is completely wrong. So, I'm going to do my best to only say what I know to be true.

I read another report today that focused more on suicide as a general subject, and in a lot of ways, this may be the more useful of the two.

My sympathy goes out to his parents. No parent should ever have to go through their child's death. It's the worst thing that can happen.

I haven't seen him since he was a child, but he was mannerly, and a joy to be around. We sat on the floor at a science fiction convention in New York and played a board game that he'd just gotten for Christmas in early 1979.

I wish he had been able to realize that there were so many people who cared about him and that would have been willing to help him, and that things couldn't possibly have been as bad as they must've seemed.