Earl Kemp, Editor of '60s Greenleaf Porn Novels, Has Died (AVN)

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Earl Kemp, the graphic-artist-turned-publisher-of-critical-science-fiction-essays-turned-porn-publisher, died on February 6 from head injuries suffered in a fall in his home. He was 90 years old.

Born in 1929, Kemp moved from his native Arkansas to Chicago in the 1940s, and was invited to join the University of Chicago Science Fiction Club in 1950. Thus began a life-long interest in the genre, leading him to become an award-winning fanzine editor; the chair of the 1962 Worldcon, an annual get-together for science fiction fans; and one of the founders of Advent Publishers, a label devoted to releasing books of criticism about the science fiction genre.

But it was in the early 1960s that Kemp embarked on a new adventure: He went to work as an editor for fellow Chicago science-fiction fan William Hamling, owner of erotic book publisher Greenleaf Classics, which over the course of its existence (1959-1974) released more than 1,000 sexy (and often sexually explicit) novels under more than 30 imprints, including such familiar ones as Bedside Books, Leisure Books and of course Greenleaf Classics.