(urth) Memento Mori, Re: This Week in Google Alerts: conference, sketch

[Marc Aramini]

Of course, I am a Wolfe fan first and an SF one second (or third) but even
though I preferred the Fuller Ceremony because it was all about Gene, I
can't recommend the Nebula Awards highly enough.  The panels in memory of
the SF greats are astonishingly informative - you get to hear people talk
who knew guys like Bradbury or pretty much every Golden Age SF writer
working in the beginning and mid 20th centuries as well as meet some of the
new faces.  I sat at dinner with Connie Willis, chatted with Joe Haldeman
as he wrote, had Robert Silverberg ask to pet my dog, sat at a panel where
the guy who wrote Logan's Run and other SF screenplays talked about the
construction of so many of the classic movies and moments in SF ... SF
fandom is truly special for that. (How many times have I, frustrated at
elderly drivers or shoppers in Arizona, quipped about Logan's Run?  And
there sitting at the front of the room was the man who provided the
punchline for my least humanitarian nastiness).  When I was a child I got
to meet Jack Williamson - he lived about 30 minutes away from me, and I
curse the foolishness that did not lead me to seek out Roger Zelazny while
he was living in Santa Fe, mere hours away, though I was a fan of his by
the 4th grade.  I feel like fans of truly popular entertainment are cheated
of this closeness.  When I saw my name in the SFWA directory, with my
address and phone number next to the addresses and phone numbers of most of
the authors I had grown up reading, it was an ethereal and impossible
feeling.  Most of the other famous personages throughout history are lost
in antiquity, forever inaccessible to us, or others are so overwhelmed with
inexplicable and mostly unwarranted fame (actors? golfers? really?) that
they are unapproachable.
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