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

[Marc Aramini]

Marginally off topic, having said all that and been rather smug in my
dismissal of "popular" entertainers, if you hang out in Las Vegas boxing
gyms you will meet an amazing number of famous boxers coming through to
train or with their proteges, most fairly friendly and accessible and happy
to be recognized - the sport must now be something more of a niche thing
than it used to be, much as SF probably is. I felt a little bad after I
wrote that last sentence below.

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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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