As a boy, Bill Martin was drawn to the science fiction pulp magazines of the 1930s like a spacecraft that ventured too close to a black hole. Their tall tales of travel through time and space and of advanced societies and other-worldly creatures fascinated him.
Martin acquired a hopeful worldview from his readings, and that stayed with him the rest of his life, said his friend, John Coker III of Orlando, president of a sci-fi fan organization called First Fandom.
It influenced his career as a professor of sociology, Coker said, the last 21 years of which he spent at Georgia State University. “Bill worked for positive change in the world and inspired succeeding generations to do the same,” Coker added.
Donald Reitzes, Georgia State’s associate dean of social and behavioral sciences, called Martin “a wonderful teacher and mentor, a true intellectual who loved to read and share ideas. He taught among other courses a graduate theory class that impacted two decades of Georgia State master’s and doctoral candidates in sociology.”
One of Martin’s specialties was a class he taught on the influence of science fiction on popular culture. “Bill thought it was an exciting mind-stretch to explore the sociological implications of how societies of other worlds worked,” Reitzes said.
Kristen Marsh was a student of Martin’s at GSU and has remained a friend ever since. Now an associate professor of sociology at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., she said Martin was both an empathetic and encouraging mentor.
“From him, I learned to love the study of social theory and to appreciate the example he set of lifelong learning,” she said. “With him, scholarship didn’t end at retirement. He was so engaged, so curious his entire life.”
William Culbertson Martin, 89, died June 13 at his Decatur home of heart failure. A celebration of his life will take place at 1 p.m. today at A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home. He will be buried with military honors Monday at Maple Hill Cemetery in Portland, Tenn., where he attended elementary and high school.
During World War II, Martin was a tank driver in the European campaign under Gen. George Patton’s command. Afterward, he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at Vanderbilt University. He also did post-graduate work in sociology at Indiana University. There he met a student from Finland, Margareta Carpelan, and they were wed in 1955.
Prior to his arrival at Georgia State, he taught at Westminster (Mo.) College, Butler University and Coe (Iowa) College.
Coker said Martin was a regular attendee at science fiction gatherings and a popular one at that — personable yet unassuming. “People gravitated to him,” Coker said, “and he made friends with some giants of the genre – including Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.
“Bill was very familiar with the science fiction literature of what we consider the Golden Age – the 1930s and 1940s — but he also stayed current with succeeding generations of sci-fi writers,” Coker said, adding that Martin lived to see some of the science fiction of the old days become science reality.
Surviving in addition to his wife are their daughter, Anya Martin of Decatur; his sister, Louise Eden of Avon, Ind.; and his brothers, Richard Martin of Indianapolis and Howard Martin of Brownsburg, Ind.
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