Over the Edge/An Edge in My Voice
Page 17
I can’t remember the weird stories Phil told, but there were at least half a dozen of them, about impositions (like this one) on his time and sanity by malign or simply overzealous readers. Kris told a story about some kid who took up residence on his front lawn. Bob remembered someone had sent him a birthday card with a green gemstone pasted on it, which he tossed in a drawer and which, years later, while preparing some papers for one of the university archives, he sent along; he received an alarmed call from the curator of records that they’d had this frippery appraised, and it was worth about seven grand!
As for me, and what fans who’ve never met me but have decided I’m loathsome, have done…don’t ask. The worst was not the ass who signed me up for fifty book clubs, who ordered goods in my name that had to be returned, who subscribed me to dozens of magazines from Time to Crocheting. The worst was not the fool who entered my phone number in his college’s computer, with a program that had calls being made six or eight times a day, with immediate disconnect, thus waking me at 5 AM, getting me off the potty at high noon, driving my secretary crazy. The worst was not the jerk who egged my front door. The worst was not…
Well, you get the idea.
The point of all this is that I want to present a speech (that can later be written up as an article to be read by the mass of fans lurking out there waiting for all of us) with so much weight of actual anecdote, so filled with the intentional and unintentional crap we all have to endure as part of “the business,” that perhaps it will deter a few of the little sophomoric darlings.
Now many of you take it all stoically. I’ve talked to some of you and you shrug, you smile, and say “what the hell.” One well-known lady swears she loves every fan who reads her books and she really doesn’t mind at all that they call her when she’s at the business of working on a novel. I don’t believe her, but…what the hell. I’m addressing the rest of you, who have had experiences that make the eyes water and the mind reel.
I ask that you jot down your anecdote as fully or briefly as you choose—and pick your most unbelievable horror story—and send it to me as soon as it’s convenient. If you don’t want your name mentioned, well, I’ll reluctantly but sedulously abide by your wishes, though use of your famous name will have more impact, of course. Just add that caveat, and I’ll respect your privacy.
Just grab a piece of second sheet and dash it off, if you will.
It’s nothing that you owe me, or anything that will put a penny in your pocket, but mayhap it will pay off in saving you just one looneytune intruding on your life.
I’ll send along a Xerox of the finished piece, of course; and any smallest effort you expend in aid of this project will win you my undying thanks. But since I just turned fifty, that “undying” part may not mean a diddly-bit.
In any case, thanks for letting me intrude as the looneytunes do.
—Thanks, folks.
Harlan
I thought perhaps I’d get one or two responses from my closest friends, maybe Silverberg or David Gerrold, maybe Ed Bryant and Vonda McIntyre. What I did not expect was the instantaneous tidal wave, the floodrush, the tsunami of responses from people I hadn’t heard from in years, each one recounting a horror more unbelievable than the one preceding.
I will recount some of them here. Most have the names of the victims attached. A few, of the most horrible, do not: the true and actual anguish that came from these incidents remains, and I have been asked by the tellers of these tales not to specify into whose lives this shitrain fell.
One more interesting sidebar.
Almost without exception, every letter begins, as does, say, Isaac Asimov’s response: “Dear Harlan, In general, my readers are a very nice bunch of people who virtually never impose,” and then every single one of them goes on, in the second paragraph, to say, “However there was this one fan who…” and then proceeds to recount a monstrous invasion of privacy or gratuitous bit of ugliness that makes the back teeth itch.
It is as if the writers in this genre, hedging their bets in the unlikely event fandom rises like the followers of Madam DeFarge in the streets of Paris, have prefaced their true feelings with a disclaimer that will save them from the guillotine. Have no fear, friends, the letters will go with me to my grave. Soon after the publication of this essay, most likely.
And here are the stories, so that those who suggest—as did Donald Kingsbury in his communiqué with the words “Each of our Karmas is very different. As L. Ron Hubbard used to say, ‘We create what we expect.’ Have a happy root canal job”—willfulness on the part of Ellison puts him solely and alone in the path of such vile behavior, will have evidence that this is a plague that touches all of us, sweetheart or monster.
Here are the faces of the demons we deal with:
We’ll begin slowly. The first response was from the late “James Tiptree, Jr.”—Alice Sheldon—who, because of her government security clearance, maintained pseudonymous anonymity as a matter of serious consequence. Alli wrote me, “Harlan, love…Lovely idea, the egregious fan examples. I’ve combed memory and nothing comes up. The problem is that for years I was insulated and little happened except the 3-day stakeout of my post office box when the WorldCon was in Baltimore…”
Here’s one from James Gunn, professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. A very quiet and pleasant man, a gentle and courteous man. “Dear Harlan, I must not arouse the same passions in fans as some of my colleagues. Oh, I’ve had people send me books and gummed stickers to sign, and one…wrote me sycophantic letters from a Florida jail and eventually wound up asking me for a thousand dollars for his legal defense…but the only incident that I found myself marveling at was the young woman who passed me at the ‘meet-the-authors reception’ at the WorldCon in Baltimore, squinted at my name tag, and said indignantly, ‘I never heard of you.’ All I could do was stare.”
Barry Malzberg could do weeks of horror stories, angst incarnate. But here’s what he wrote: “Harlan, I think it’s a bad idea altogether, this topic of Great Fan Lunacies Me and My Colleagues Have Known, because this only encourages the troops, stirs them up, like one political disaster has been known to trigger another. The 95% who cannot conceive of being similarly loathesome will laugh and applaud and enjoy and see trivialized real pain, and the other 5% will be taking notes.”
In the process of bringing this manuscript up to date, after five years, it was suggested by one editor that perhaps I should drop the anecdote of the “seven thousand dollar gemstone” as Robert Bloch reported it, because it redounded to Bloch’s benefit. Well, yes, I could have dropped that story; but the intent of this piece is to show the reality, not a carefully manipulated special-pleading slant on that reality. I submit, nonetheless, that anyone crazy enough to send a rock like that, casually, without advising anyone of its value, is a looneytune by any analysis, and might as easily do something dangerous or inconvenient the next time out…or heaven forbid the object of such a person’s admiration should rebuff the attentions! But that wasn’t even what Bob Bloch chose as his most outstanding fan horror story. Here’s what he wrote:
Dear Harlan:
You know the old saying, “Once bitten, twice shy?” Well, I got a new one for you. “Three times bitten; what a dummy!”
A fan I’d known for thirty years kept pestering me to do a collection of my old Lefty Feep stories. Finally he said he’d go into specialty publishing and do the book himself—all I had to do was choose the yarns and write an introduction. My former agent agreed, so I went to work. After a year of unanswered letters I finally caught up with this joker at a convention and pinned him to the wall. “Hey, I forgot to tell you,” he said. “I decided to put out somebody else’s collection instead.”•
A second fan proposed to put out a new collection of my fanzine pieces as a sequel to THE EIGHTH STAGE OF FANDOM. Since he was already heavily into specialty publishing I saw no harm in the idea and, as requested, went over my material, selected the best, and prepared an introduction.
Unlike the first yo-yo, this one did reply to my letters, but never took any action. Eighteen months later I finally managed to pry my material back from him.
The third fan was on the committee of a convention where I was scheduled to be guest of honor—after they found out Jules Verne was dead. This turkey wanted to do a volume of my hitherto-unreprinted stories, both as a convention special and for subsequent sale through a publishing outlet. In this case I needn’t wait a year or a year and a half—time was of the essence and he needed my choice of stories plus introductions to same. I rushed the stuff out to him and within two months—right in time for the convention!—he called to tell me he’d changed his mind and there wasn’t any book.
I am not releasing the name of the first fan, because he’s dead.
And I’m not releasing the names of the other two fans, because I just might kill them yet. (Maybe I won’t kill them. Maybe I’ll just go after their dicks with a cheese grater.)
I selected dear Alli Sheldon, gentlemanly Jim Gunn, and the ever-fan-helpful Bob Bloch as the first three invokers of the litany, for a reason. I mentioned earlier that Donald Kingsbury’s letter suggested we bring such iniquity upon ourselves by having sodden karma. His letter glowed with the wonderful experiences he’s had at conventions. Apparently, the only thing dismaying ever to have involved him was this:
“Once I was sitting forlornly at an autograph table all alone because everyone was lined up for Asimov and Ellison, and a sweet young thing who felt sorry for me ran out and bought a book by me, even though she didn’t know me from Adam, just so I’d have at least one customer.” And then Don finished off the note—as I mentioned earlier—with this: “Each of our Karmas is very different. As L. Ron Hubbard used to say, ‘We create what we expect.’ Have a happy root canal job.”
I expected a bit of that. Because I have chosen to suffer this kind of behavior not at all, mythology has grown that I am rude, meanspirited, brutal and often violent with sweet-faced, innocent fans who merely wish to convey good wishes.
This is probably as valid as an arrant suggestion that Donald Kingsbury is a jealous chucklehead who wouldn’t know if he were being insulted or put-upon if the offenders performed their acts using jackhammers and IV drips.
Nonetheless, to remove from the equation any slightest hint of special pleading, of self-defense, or rationalization for a monstrously uncivil Ellison…I have obtained the letters, have seen to an editor’s attestation that they’re real, and I’ve opened the parade of the damned with three writers who have been known for their kindness, civility, leaning toward fan interests, their good upbringing and unblemished courtesy.
So even if one one-millionth of the ugly tales told about your compiler-of-the-facts is true, it has no bearing. Let us simply look at what other writers say.
You’ll enjoy, particularly, the letters sent by women writers. You think the men have it bad? Listen to Marta Randall:
Dear God, Harlan,
I’m absolutely appalled at this idea you’ve generated about your Westercon speech. Not that I think it shouldn’t be done, and that it’s high time, and all that stuff, but I admire the sheer, unadulterated, brazen guts it takes to get up before a room full of fans and tell them about all the terrible things they’ve done through the years. Visions of stonings and crucifixions, vituperation and much noise, howlings on panels and illiteracy in the pages of fanzines—it’s positively delicious. Do it. I won’t be there to see it, but I’ll be with you in spirit.
Most of the assaults upon me by fans have been verbal. The chubby young woman in Renaissance drag who interrupted me at a party, pushed my companion aside, stared at me, and said: Oh, that’s what you look like. I read a book of yours once and I couldn’t understand a word in it. The intense fellow who approached me in a hucksters room, asked if he could ask a question, and when I said yes, he said, I’ve read everything you’ve ever written, from your first short story on. I really loved that first short story a lot, but the rest of your work stinks. Would you care to comment on why your writing has gone downhill? Two years ago, I was injudicious enough to write a letter to a ’zine responding to someone’s typically fug-headed statements about another writer, and received a response telling me that I was obviously a neophyte because this bozo had never heard of me, and if I’d send this guy a copy of my books, he’d be glad to tell me what was wrong with them. The fan who got blotto at a dead-dog party, fell asleep in the con suite at my feet, and spent the next day telling everyone he’d spent the night with me. The Trekkie at the one Star Trek convention I was inveigled into attending, who said of my books, to me, “Well, if they’re not about Star Trek, they’re full of shit.”
It ain’t much, thank God, but you’re welcome to use it, and my name.
I just had a terrible thought: what if your speech simply gives them more ideas?
Do you begin to see a thread? This is the second time the suggestion has been made. As nervously as many writers sing the praises of their fans, do you begin to perceive: they’re afraid of you, afraid of what you’re capable of doing, as lark, as gag, as obsessive self-amusement.
Here’s Asimov.
In general, my readers are a very nice bunch of people who virtually never impose…There are the teachers who force all their students to write me painstaking scrawls and make it necessary for me to answer politely because I can’t bear to disappoint kids. (I’d like to strangle the teachers, though.)
However, once I blew my top. A bookstore owner asked if I could sign “a few” books for him. I sighed and said okay.
Next thing I got huge packing crates containing every book of mine he had in the store, scores and scores and scores of them. My first impulse was to throw them away and claim they never came. My second was to keep the books for use as gifts (or to a deserving charity). But I couldn’t do that. I had to sign them all, reassemble the packing cases, hang them together with ropes and then my wife and I had to stick them on luggage carriers and lug them to the post office which was several blocks away (and I’m not exactly in my first youth any more). The only satisfaction I got was to write the bookstore fellow an eloquent letter that probably singed all the hair off his head and body.
Which is as likely as that the idiot understood he’d made an impertinent fool of himself to begin with. I’ve told Isaac a hundred times that just because we’re both Jewish, does not mean that we must suffer two thousand years’ retroactive persecution at the hands of human trash like this bookstore fellow. And did he even understand what he’d done, after Isaac apprised him of the monstrous imposition? No, I’d venture not. Because, you see, that’s another aspect of this:
Stupid enough to commit the sin in the first place, means…a singularity of tunnel-vision, a self-involvement, a lack of empathy, that blinds them to the awfulness of what they’ve done…even when you explain it slowly and simply.
For instance, I’m rewriting this essay in my bed, as I went in for fairly serious surgery little more than a week ago. A number of fans found out about this, and so I was pleasured, three days before Christmas, by a bookstore owner in the L.A. area, who knows me for years, who called and asked if I’d mind if he came by with a book of mine someone had just bought, for a personal signature. He had spoken to me the day before, and knew I couldn’t move out of the bed for fear of the sutures giving way, but he called to ask if I’d mind, during my recuperation, if I’d sign some goddam book for a customer.
I was astonished and told him I was in bed. He asked a second time. I said, “I’m recuperating! I was three hours under the knife! What the fuck do I care about signing some book for a stranger at this time!?!” So he suggested he come by tomorrow, instead. I hung up on him.
Do they understand, Isaac? Not bloody likely!
They feel as if we’re being rude to them.
Barry Longyear wrote one of the most touching of the letters I received in reply to my query. For personal reasons, I’ll only reproduce excerpts here…the totality is too intimate.
“Yes,” I replied, preparing to bask in author’s glory.
He hauled off and decked me. “That’s for Duelling Clowns,” he said; then he stormed out of the hotel…
About a year after completing my treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction at St. Mary’s Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis, I attended my first convention since sobering up. This was the time when my real fan horror took place.
At that time I was still very uncomfortable in drinking situations. Even with a year of A. A. under your belt, early sobriety is a fragile thing. Since MiniCon was being held in St. Paul, about a ten minute drive from St. Mary’s Rehab, I figured if I was ever going to be safe at a convention, MiniCon would be the best bet….
The next morning I was up early trying to figure out what one does at a convention at seven AM, never before having had this experience. I was a mite shaky in the self-image department, so I decided to give a fan a thrill and let him eat breakfast with a real-live big time SF pro. This particular fan was on the con staff and had just gotten off duty. In the hotel restaurant we sat down and placed our orders. Every pore on my body was open, waiting to absorb sorely needed compliments. He finished his breakfast, sat back in his booth and smiled at me as he looked up from my name tag. “Well, Barry,” he said, “what is it that you do that rates you a guest ribbon?”
As I watched the staved-in hull of my career sinking into oblivion, I focused on my grapefruit and muttered something about doing a little scribbling now and then.