I won" t yank your chain on this. There were some writers who answered my request with letters that said they tended to stay away from fans, stay away from conventions, and so they didn" t have any gruesome anecdotes to relate. There were about half a dozen-Marvin Kaye, Algis Budrys, Dean Ing, John Varley, Jack Williamson, David Bischoff- who said they" d had nothing but pleasant relations with their fans through many happy years of a.s.sociation, and they were sorry but they simply had nothing to pa.s.s along. Those letters, however, were written in June of 1984, and I" ve had four of that group of six admit that they had, in fact, suffered a number of wretched experiences- which they recounted with detail and anger- and they simply didn" t want to cause any trouble.
But how about Joanna Russ? If there has been a writer more pa.s.sionate and outspoken about what concerns her in art and in society, who has been more forthcoming about putting those concerns in her work, I don" t know who it might be. Unlike many of the writers I contacted, who were " prudent" about saying anything for fear one of you little psychotic darlings might seek retribution, Joanna was candid; and she wrote: --.
Yeah. The worst.
Well, besides the folks who send novel ma.n.u.scripts with instructions to tell them where to send it, (I got three last week) without postage- I guess the worst was several years ago in Boulder, when I got a letter from what appeared to be a junior high school student, asking me to answer three pages of questions about my " philosophy of life" since her teacher had told the cla.s.s to do a research paper on a living writer. She also asked for one (1) copy of everything I had written.
I wrote gently back, explaining as tactfully as I could, that no living writer had time to answer three pages of questions about anything, and that I barely had enough copies of my work for myself I suggested that she buy some of them herself, since I had to pay for them, too, and that she ask her teacher how to do library research, since I suspected that was the sort of thing her teacher had had in mind originally. I then wished her good luck in her career and ended the letter.
Several weeks later I got a letter from her older sister, who threatened to expose me in Ms. and a few other magazines, since my cruel answer had blighted her sister" s life and career. Sister (she said) had planned to become- a writer, but after my callous and vicious treatment, said sister only lay on her little bed and cried all day. I had utterly ruined her life. (I am not making this up.) Or maybe it was the consciousness-raising group that threw me out on the grounds that I was too articulate.
Or the folks who ask for a signed photograph ($9 to me) sans remuneration and also sans stamps.
The funniest was a fellow who wrote from Walla Walla that he had read THE FEMALE MAN and just loved my mind. He also loved my photograph on the back and a.s.sured me that he was a fun-loving soul who wanted to correspond with me about my philosophy of life (what does that phrase mean?). When I wrote back that I had no time for handsome men of 5" 11" with fun-loving souls, or anybody else, I got a second letter which dwelt on my physical charms and sort of lost sight of the book, which I don" t think he read (just between you and me and the lamppost).
And the women who write me, complaining about what I let be done (me? !) to covers of paperback books of mine, and refuse to believe that I had nothing to do with it- Or the friends and colleagues who say, " Why don" t you just live off your writing?" and refuse to believe that I have never gotten more than a $3,500 advance for a novel, save once- My favorite horror story, after the sisters business, was an open-mike women" s coffeehouse where I read one Sat.u.r.day night. Two solemn and impressed young women were talking afterward, and I heard one say (of me), " She" s so creative." A friend found me bashing my head against a wall in sheer frustrated rage. After a b.l.o.o.d.y quarter of a century of enslavement to this peculiar obsession, after work, work, work, endless work, to be told, yes, you are so " creative." Pork chops.
Good luck with your speech. It ought to make wonderfully ghastly reading.
Oh, it does make ghastly reading, Joanna.
But you think you" ve got problems, what with naive readers blaming you for what publishers put on your covers? Well how about when they pretend to be naive, merely to cause you grief? What do I mean? Well, here" s a cla.s.sic, fortuitously recent, example of just how malicious fans can be.
In the Letters section of Isaac Asimov" s Science Fiction Magazine for December 1989, there appears a communique from one Paul Osborn of Bremerton, Washington. (At least, the letter is signed as being from someone named Paul Osborn, and the postmark- I" m told- was Bremerton, Washington. But not all is what it appears to be, in the world of science fiction" s feral aficionados; as we shall shortly see.) After dealing with other matters in the previous March 1989 cover-dated issue, the alleged Mr. Osborn writes as follows: " I liked the Ellison story very much, but why was it listed as a novelette when it was shorter than two of the short stories in the issue?"
Now that" s a perfectly reasonable question to ask, and as anyone familiar with Occam" s Razor would reply, " It was probably an editorial glitch, a production error that no one caught." Which is exactly what it was.
The story in question, " The Few, the Proud," is a mere 3,600 words. It runs seven and a third pages. It is obviously not a novelette. (The universally-accepted designations for story-length are as follows: short story, length under 7500 words; novelette, 7500 to 17,500; novella, 17,500 to 40,000; novel, 40,000 and up.) My preceding appearance in IASFM, in the previous year" s mid-December issue, had been a novelette: " The Function of Dream Sleep" at 9900 words. So it" s conceivable that the Production Director or one of the editorial a.s.sistants got them switched around in memory. Whatever.
The point is, even to the slowest intellect going, this is a simple, human error that took place prior to publication; and a transposition so unimportant (appearing as it does only on the table of contents) that it didn" t amount to a mote of dust in the course of literary history.
And had the alleged Mr. Osborn stopped there, having asked a reasonable question, it would have been the kind of letter one would expect to receive from a rational reader. But he didn" t. Here" s what follows, in the same paragraph: " I suppose a cynic would say that Mr. Ellison, The Guy With Lord Knows How Many Hugo and Nebula Awards (But Always Ready for MORE MORE MORE !!!) is trying to put a fast one over on Duh Hicks from Duh West by calling a short story a novelette. Since there are always fewer novelettes published in a year than there are short stories (in 1988 Asimov" s published thirty novelettes versus fifty-three short stories), this stratagem gives "The Few, the Proud" a decided edge. As I said, this is the response of a cynic, and I" ve given up cynicism for Lent. But by the time the annual index rolls around (and with it, the Readers Award poll- another chance for MORE MORE MORE!!! awards) Lent will be over. I" m looking forward to it."
Heaven knows there is no shortage of paranoia in the world; but even in a Universe of Conspiracy Theories that load of ignorant drivel is laughable. As if I, in Los Angeles, managed somewhichway to gull the editor- who paid me by the word and knew very well how long the piece was- the managing editor, the editorial a.s.sistants, and the contracts manager, all of them three thousand miles away in New York, into letting me suborn them into mislabeling a short story as a novelette for the demented purpose of affording the story a chance to win an award, the designations for which are set by parties unknown to me, who count the wordage!
And how did I manage to do this?
Do I have unspeakable secrets that can be used to blackmail these individuals? Did I payout vast amounts of money to insure a better shot at winning awards that are basically useless to me after thirty-five years at the writing profession? Is there anyone in his or her right mind that could credit any of what the alleged Mr. Osborn suggests as anything more than lunacy?
Even the most naive reader, unfamiliar with the more esoteric aspects of magazine publication, would perceive that this was a straightforward production error of the most common, most inconsequential sort. And one would dismiss the alleged Mr. Osborn" s babbling as the ruminations of someone being intentionally silly.
But let" s look at what he actually wrote.
As one who lives in Duh West, the paralogical reference to Hicks from Duh West makes no sense at all.
But consider the suggestion that lies pa.s.sim the convoluted a.s.sumptions of the alleged Mr. Osborn" s proposal: Ellison has won all these awards, but he" s greedy, never has enough awards. But those awards weren" t won for the quality of the work, they were somehow managed, coerced, manipulated, all the way back to the first one in 1965, and for the next twenty-five years. By incredibly clever means, Ellison has managed to put it over on the hundreds and hundreds of individuals responsible for awarding the Hugos, Nebulas, Edgars, Bram Stoker, P.E.N., Writers Guild, British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards this Machiavellian no-talent has acc.u.mulated.
Not to mention somehow managing to hypnotize the readers of, say, Locus, who have voted for Ellison work over the years, in the number of thousands.
When the letter appeared in Asimov" s, the magazine should have allowed me the courtesy of replying on the same page to the alleged Mr. Osborn" s fever-dream. But not even the managing editor, Sheila Williams, took the letter very seriously. It was clear the author of that delusion was so soph.o.m.oric and so off-base, that there wasn" t much point in replying. Nonetheless, Ms. Williams wrote a response: --.
When the Fourth Annual Readers" Award poll does appear; readers will be asked to look at the stories carefully and to only rank them in the category under which they are listed in the Index.
Which is beside the point.
It doesn" t address what Mr. Osborn (alleged) was really up to.
Because, if it were simply an overly punctilious reader being foolish enough to comment on a glitch as obvious as this even to a neophyte, then why the need for all that glop about MORE MORE MORE!!! (and each time the phrase appears, he puts three exclamation marks )? We are drawn to dismiss the whole thing as, well, ignorant drivel; and I would have done so, too, except years of dealing with this kind of mentality makes my antennae quiver.
And so I got the address of the correspondent from Asimov" s (there had been no direction by the letter-writer that the address was to have been withheld), and I called information in Bremerton, Washington. And not only is there no Paul Osborn at the address on the letter, there is no " Paul Osborn" listed in Bremerton at all. And a simple check of public records in Bremerton advises that the parties listed as living at the address the alleged Mr. Osborn gave as his own, do not seem to go by the name Osborn.
So who is this letter-writer who cobbles up gratuitously insulting codswallop? From the evidence of the letter, it is a regular reader of science fiction...what we call a fan.
And it is one who thinks himself (or herself) devilishly clever to go into left field to spread just another tidy slather of ugly supposition on a loaf already redolent with myth and bulls.h.i.t. What kind of mentality is so meanspirited?
How many other writers have suffered this kind of odious letterhacking opprobrium through the years? And how many work-hours have been lost in trying to rectify the lousy impressions made by these people? Enough hours to write enough books to fill a large showcase. Books no one will ever read.
What toll does it take? Here" s a small part of a four-page, single-s.p.a.ced letter in response to my original query. It is from David Gerrold: " The thing is, Harlan- I made a mistake. I thought that fans were important. If I" d never been introduced to fandom, I" d have saved five years of mistakes. Indeed, I credit my relationship with the more hostile elements of the fannish community with being partially responsible for a five year slump in my writing." David then goes on to relate anecdote after anecdote- one deranged woman who convinced a group of fans at a convention that she was carrying David" s baby- a fan who sent him a greeting card that was personally inscribed, Merry Christmas to Everybody. Except you.- a fan who solicited contributions supposedly intended for the benefit of another fan who had been robbed- who didn" t even exist- and he ends his letter as follows: --.
Curiously, there was a time when I thought the core of fandom was basically good people; it was only the fringes who were dangerous...I" m not willing to believe that any more. I" m not willing to be as accessible to fandom as I used to be. To do that would be to subject the writer inside to the kind of s.h.i.tstorms that produced the slump in the first place...Since I left the fans behind, I have become the writer I want to be.
Not just to writers comes this unwanted attention. Ask anyone of a dozen artists whose names have appeared on Hugo ballots the past ten years how they respond to their paintings being stolen from the art show exhibition rooms, no matter how tough and wary the Security Guards; ask them how swell they feel when the fat fan scrutinizes the minimum bid on a painting and turns to the creator to snarl, " Who the h.e.l.l d" ya think you are, Frank Frazetta?" ; ask them how their hearts sank when they got back the unsold artwork after the convention and found one of the oils had been slashed, how they felt that there were footprints on the black-and-white sketches.
But don" t ask Tim Kirk about conventions, because his face is a mask of sorrow. He hasn" t been to a convention in more than nine years and, if he" s lucky, he won" t have to attend another one. He" s more than disenchanted. He" s forlorn about what fandom appears to be in his eyes these days. He won" t use the word pathetic, he prefers bathetic. But he knows that whatever pinnacles of artistic achievement he has scaled, or yet will scale, it has been in spite of fans and their " support." Because all they ever required of him was that he draw cute and harmless five-finger exercises. (By the thousands, for fanzines, who never paid him a dime.) Tim doesn" t berate fans, or put them down, or rail against them. He doesn" t say what I" m saying here in public. He knows better, as do so many other artists and writers- who seem to fear this loving cadre of vampire fans- not to stir the pot.
But if you catch him late in the evening, when he" s other than his usual quiet, charming self, he" ll make it clear that the worst thing fans did to him was deny him the challenge of being as complete an artist as he wanted to be. Perhaps it" s not their fault-they like what they like, and they want more and more of it, without change, without growth, without experimentation- but if an artist has a responsibility to his craft, then it doesn" t seem uncommon to expect the audience that also demands the artist" s attention to show some sort of responsibility to the artist.
From Gregory Benford: --.
The oddest incident I recall is a fellow who sent along the predictable idea for a novel, with the usual deal: you write it, split the money with me. When I sent it back, unread, he replied with a warning-not that I shouldn" t use the idea myself in fiction, but rather, a demand that he" d better not see me publishing research on this idea in the scientific literature!
He honestly thought his notion was Deep Stuff, and I, the sinister scientist, would ache to enhance my skinny publication list with a milestone paper on the wonderful whatsit.
Ah well.
Ah well, indeed. The heartfelt sigh, the resigned shake of the head, and the dismaying certainty that the variety of these individual lunacies is uncountable. If they don" t get us with the compendium of horrors already explicated, they do it like this...
From Spider Robinson: --.
Total stranger calls up from " somewhere in California" at 2 AM. Says he" s been thinking hard about suicide, and wants to know, is there really a Callahan" s Place, and if so how do I get there, I have to know, tonight. Five minutes after the conversation ended, of course, I figured out just how I should have played it: told him yes, The Place is real, given him a set of bogus directions to anywhere on Long Island, and hoped that on his way across the continent he ran into something that cheered him up. But I am not a trained crisis-call jockey or suicide counselor; what I did on the spur of the moment was what any jerk would have done. You make your own Callahan" s Place wherever you go, always darkest before the dawn, a year from now you" ll look back on this and laugh, why don" t you tell me a little about what" s bugging you and maybe we can find a way out together...
He hung up abruptly.
My firm belief is that he either died or tried to, very hard, within the ensuing fifteen minutes. I" ll never know. I don" t even have a first name for him. I went through changes the next few weeks. What I came away with was anger. Because I once entertained that guy for an idle hour, he repaid me by dropping his entire karma, too heavy for him to heft, onto my lap, while making sure I" d have no place to put it.
Big surprise, Spider. That" s standard operating procedure for this kind of emotional vampire. I wish I had a quarter for every " suicide" who has called me...and always at an indecent, inconvenient hour. And they never tell you who they are, they only want to whimper and moan about their unfortunate state of existence. The first hundred or so times it happened to me, I got all puffed up with human compa.s.sion and a sense of responsibility, and tried to talk them down.
Perhaps it helped, maybe it didn" t. Who" s ever to know? Because these wee hours parasites haven" t the common decency ever to let you know, later, that you were of any value. They just flap in, unload their s.h.i.t, make you feel awful, and then cut off. These days I have a very different manner with such intruders on my privacy.
But that was only the beginning of Spider" s letter. He had a second story about another looneytune who appeared at his door. And then he offered this charming (and absolutely emblematic) delineation of the Fan Mentality at full flower, the stone fan being itself in excelsis: --.
Jeanne and I are at a con; some fans announce they" re taking us to dinner. Great, we" re broke, and we" re starving. So we drive, and we drive, and we drive. An hour, and Jeanne, as even-tempered a woman as ever lived, is threatening mutiny if we don" t arrive soon. I should have guessed, from the way the driver kept giggling. An hour and a quarter after we had eyes to eat, the three-car caravan of fans pulls up in front of a roadside beanery called, you guessed it, Callahan" s. The food was awful, the prices were horrendous, the service slovenly, and when the check came we learned for the first time that no one had figured on paying for our dinner. I mean, we" re all fans together, right?
We did not pay for our dinner- we couldn" t! We were broke and living off editorial charity for the weekend. But it was an unpleasant moment, complicated by the infuriating awareness that they had done all this to show us how much they loved us...
And he went on to deliver up a few more pain in the a.s.s stories, ending his letter like this: --.
Hope all this is of help to you. Frankly, I don" t hold out much hope that anything can smarten the little darlings up.
The list of authors and artists who have been stiffed with bounced checks for their services at fan-engineered conventions and media " spectaculars" is as endless, as well-tenanted as is the list of writers and artists who have had fans mooch meals, lodging and loans from them. Whether such productions have been conferences cobbled together by hubris-surfeited fans at colleges they attended (who rigged the gig just so they could meet " their favorite author" ), or at hotels in large cities, whether as Star Trek conclaves or as comic book/movie-tv/science fiction gatherings. Writers as prominent as Sturgeon, Herbert, Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Simak, Bova, Moorc.o.c.k and Sheckley (to name just the few whose unprofitable experiences come quickly to mind) have found themselves lured at one time or another to some speaking engagement or convention that was nothing more than a demented wish-fulfillment in the litter-filled head of an adolescent fan, have found themselves having lost actual speaking gigs or trips because they thought they were committed for a job that never materialized, have found themselves at one time or another holding bad paper laid on them by a sweet-faced fan.
Joe Haldeman wrote: --.
One recurrent problem is that I write hard-science sf but am no scientist, and so occasionally screw up. There are legions of weirdos out there who read with a calculator in one scabrous paw...There have been a couple of potentially dangerous crazies. I got a scrawled note after THE FOREVER WAR came out, congratulating me for " giving it to the Jews." All I can figure out is that one of the first people to die in the book is named Rabi, a Muslim name. But that guy probably sees. .h.i.tler" s face in his Rice Krispies...One strange time a drunkish fan followed me around a convention rather late at night, trying to talk me into playing poker. I finally acquiesced, and three or four of us went up to his room, where he produced fancy chips and cards. At that time I showed him that I only had two dollars" cash on me, two antes. He was outraged and actually pulled a knife. I took it away from him easily enough...but it was one of those experiences that" s more scary in retrospect than it is when it happens.
I mean, Charlie Manson was a science fiction fan. I" m not so worried about the crazy letters and the occasional fan who starts sputtering at you in public. I" m worried about the quiet guy with a hair up his a.s.s and a pistol in his pocket. Face it, Harlan; we get up on enough stages and sooner or later that guy is going to be in the audience. Let" s hope he can" t shoot straight.
He was in one of my audiences, Joe. He shot straight enough. Remind me to tell you that story some time.
That" s one of the stories I can tell. There are many more anecdotes and horrors I" ve been asked not to pa.s.s along. There are stories I" ve been told " off the record," in strictest confidence, sotto voce and sub rosa, stories whose tellers could not stop themselves from imparting the fine news, but who, as they completed their tale of woe, suddenly realized this would see print. And they asked that their names be withheld. These are stories I cannot verify...from sources who insist on remaining unnamed...
Such as the very famous older writer, a golden age star name, who took a fan in to stay at his home, who only asked the fan to baby-sit when the writer and his wife had to go out, who didn" t discover till weeks after the fan had left, that his " guest" had sodomized the writer" s eleven-year-old granddaughter.
Such as the fantasy author who had written a strongly s.e.xual novel, who was spat upon at a convention.
Such as the elderly writer who was forced to move from her apartment to escape the attentions of three fans who would not stop calling her, writing her, and coming to her house unannounced.
And more, and more, and more. But this becomes only the heaping on of redundancies. To what end? To the end of b.u.t.tressing the reality of what writers suffer with many of their " loving fans" so solidly that not even the smallest rathole of rationalization- such as the " Well, Ellison is such a visible target, he deserves what he gets" non sequitur- is left to the guilt-ridden apologists who will bristle and rage at this essay.
After I had delivered this material at Westercon 37 in Portland, in 1984, I received a great many letters from pros and fans, horrified by the extent of this problem.
How about this, from Simon Hawke: --.
Not long ago, my agent was trying to sell something of mine to an editor who shall go nameless. (And I will not divulge the name, don" t ask.) Keep in mind, this is an editor I" ve never met or spoken to, but one who knows that Simon Hawke used to write under another name. (I am a very different person now in many ways. Older, wiser, calmer and more philosophical about life" s various disappointments.) This editor took one look at the proposal, at my name on it, and- I have on very good authority from someone who was in the office- rejected it without even bothering to read it. Apparently, this editor was once on a train, en route to a convention in Boston, and recalled a group of female fans, sitting at the other end of the car and talking loudly enough that she could hear them, discussing my " s.e.xual excesses," rather like a group of high school girls comparing notes, apparently in so detailed and graphic a manner that she was so put off, she remembered it years later and it influenced her opinion of me. I was not someone she wanted to do business with. And the reason I know this is that she mentioned the incident in the office, where my acquaintance overheard.
Now, at the risk of seeming overly self-effacing, while I have, in the past, occasionally gone to bed with someone I met at a convention, I am not Warren Beatty, nor am I De Sade, and I am not exactly John Holmes. In short, I am an average lover at best, I like to think considerate, affectionate, and giving, but by no stretch of the imagination am I a s.e.xual athlete. Not to put too fine a point on it, I don" t know who those women were, and while it" s certainly possible I may have met one or more of them, perhaps even been intimate with one of them, though I cringe at the thought, I certainly did not do anything so out of the ordinary that it would excite any comment. Certainly nothing that would disgust anyone. And yet, though this incident does not begin to approach the sort of awful things you spoke of, it tarnished my reputation in that editor" s eyes and it cost me a sale.
Like many people, I used to think that you attracted that sort of thing, unintentionally, by virtue of your highly visible profile and your aggressive, up-close-and-personal demeanor. I was wrong, as you so demonstrably proved by citing those who gave your letter a serious response. I had dropped out of sight, not going to cons or even speaking to editors, letting my agent handle all my business, anxious to put to rest, once and for all, the sort of gossip that had been floating over my head like a Sword of Damocles.
Mildred Downey Broxon wrote, in part, " That was a zinger of a speech at Westercon, and was the sole topic of conversation for many hours afterward, at least among the shaken and drained group in which I found myself.
" Your inclusion of "testimonials" from other sufferers added verisimilitude. It could, after all, be argued that your high visibility and a.s.sertive personality make you a natural target; but the evidence of other, widely-a.s.sorted victims was d.a.m.ning."
She said something even more interesting, and I" ll get to that in a moment; but the authentication of what I" ve set down here, by the testimonial of the editor, parallels my actually displaying the letters at that Guest of Honor banquet. This time I didn" t want the alleged Mr. Osborns of fandom to have a free shot at invalidating the message, muddying the water, diverting the focus...by calumny heaped on the messenger. Even if I cop to all the ugliness rumor and gossip lay at my door, even if I am as beastly as the fan mill suggests, how do the apologists explain all the rest of this litany?
As Malzberg said, the ninety-five percent of you out there who are decent, sane, rational and courteous, those of you horrified at these revelations, will not know what to make of it all, because you don" t act that way and you won" t be able to fathom how others can act that way and think they" re cute or anything less than loathsome. But the five percent- a few of whom will no doubt appear in the letters column in a forthcoming issue to explain just why writers do deserve to be treated like s.h.i.t, how we would be nowhere if it weren" t for their valiant support of our careers by expenditure of their hard-earned pennies, how we have no right complaining and should be slavishly grateful for even vicious notice-that five percent will continue in its brutish ways.
And after I delivered the material you" ve just read (which has been augmented by additional contributions from writers whose replies reached me after the Westercon, or who were solicited recently for a few updatings), here" s how I ended my Guest of Honor speech: (I said:) " I" ve saved the best for last. Of all the things that have been done to me- and I have only scratched the surface here- and of all the things that have been done to other writers and artists, the prizewinning monstrousness, the anecdote that I think will put the last nail in the testament, comes from Alan Dean Foster.
" I" ve saved it for last, because not even the most vicious detractor can find a bad word to say about Alan Dean Foster. He is as decent and courteous a man as one can hope to meet.
" You ain" t gonna believe this one:"
Dear Harlan, In re yours of the 5th. I have only one incident that might suit your purposes and I still haven" t quite figured it out. I was heading back to my hotel room in the company of one of the con staff, after delivering the guest of honor speech at the past Okon, when someone yelled, " Alan Foster?" and I turned around and they hit me in the face with a paper cup full of warm vomit.
To this day what puzzles me is not the attack itself, which one comes to expect after a while, but the type of mind that not only could conceive of such a thing but actually find amus.e.m.e.nt in the preservation of its own vomit for purposes of using it to a.s.sault another person. Someone had to throw up carefully into a cup and then carry it around with them while in the process of searching me out. To me, that" s infinitely sicker than actually throwing the stuff.
Oh, gentle reader, you should have seen that banquet hall as I read from Alan" s letter. The room was packed- if I recall correctly, something in the range of fifteen or sixteen hundred attendees at that Westercon- and delivering this talk took an hour and a half. As time went by, and name after name came before them, as incident of awfulness followed incident upon anecdote, the room fell silent...the timorous, nervous laughter that had accompanied the telling of the first few stories, even that had ceased. At one table a woman was crying, her head laid down across her arms on the tabletop. At another table a man kept striking the padded seat of his chair, over and over, hardly seeming to know he was doing it. A woman was in the rear, moaning stop it, stop it, please stop it. A man standing against a wall had his eyes closed, swaying, rocking, back and forth. And from everywhere in that large ballroom, when I read Alan" s letter, came the gasps of disbelief. At last, at final measure, now they couldn" t deny the underlying message of the speech. All had been preamble. Now they were drained, horrified to their shoetops, stony-eyed and pale, a great room filled with decent human beings who had to admit, at last, that their ranks contained a few of those who are unforgivable.
I had just turned fifty years old. Little more than a month earlier. And one of the fan dealers had taken note of that fact, and had produced an item to sell at this Westercon whereat I was Guest of Honor. And so this is how I finished my lecture: " And where does it all come to mean something, to have a purpose, this dreadful litany of rudeness and impositions? What is the point? Well, it comes to a fan/dealer having the notion that printing up T-shirts that say, oh so cleverly, 50 SHORT YEARS OF HARLAN ELLISON, to be sold at a convention where this Harlan Ellison is the Guest of Honor, without even suggesting that the man whose name he" s selling for five dollars a shot might be ent.i.tled to a royalty, much less be ent.i.tled to a moment" s thought that the T-shirt might be insulting, is acceptable behavior.
" But no one makes those considerations, and dozens of such T-shirts are sold, and worn, as I can see from here that many of you have decked yourselves out in precisely that item of finery, and you come up to me, and you stand right in front of this alleged " Guest of Honor" and you ask for an autograph, or you ask a question, or you make a comment, wearing clothing that mocks my height (a fact of nature over which I have no control, as opposed to your bad manners, which are entirely of your own making), and not one of you thinks the subject of the T-shirt might be hurt by such an insensitive act. One must a.s.sume none of you gave it a consideration, because the alternative is the contemplation of someone who throws warm vomit.
" And the subject of the T-shirt" s logo only smiles as he signs your autograph, appearing properly slavishly grateful for your attention, and the fifty-year-old man says nothing.
" But like George Alec Effinger and Stephen King and Barry Malzberg and David Gerrold and Tim Kirk and many, many others who asked that their names not be mentioned...the short fifty-year-old man will resist more and more ever going among such people.
" Because they are not kind. And one need not put up with unkindness from those who pretend to be all of the same family of n.o.ble dreamers, not when there are so many total strangers in the world who will be beastly without reason.
" Children of our dreams, so many of you have said. Oh, how I was moved by what you wrote; oh, how you turned my life around; oh, how much this or that story meant to me when I was lonely and desperate. Children of our dreams.
"Xenogenesis.
" The children do not resemble the parents.