Sheila's LiveJournal

I'm off to UC Riverside today for the Eaton Conference. I was at the very first one in 1979, courtesy of a dean who gave conference info and travel money to a part-time teacher. This was the same dean who let me teach creative writing and the literature of science fiction, both when I was still part-time. He believed in the right person for the job, not seniority or tenure or full time status. (He later hired me full-time.) Not many deans like him, alas.

This year, they asked me to judge the fiction writing contest for UC undergraduates, and they';re actually going to pick up my hotel room! That's a first, even though I have presented papers to the conference before and was keynote speaker one time. I also get to autograph and sell a few books on Saturday, I hope!

I'm looking forward to seeing old friends in Riverside, including Samantha Henderson -- who I haven't seen since we shared a room last weekend at the Nebs! {g}

I'm home, and ready for a nap. I spent Thursday and Sunday nights with family, and the two in between at the Nebula Hotel in Brentwood (anybody remember OJ?) on Sunset. Samantha Henderson and I had the air conditioner (not) from hell in our room; the hotel "maintenance" (I use the term advisedly) couldn't fix it, and the only way not to roast to death in our sleep was to turn it off altogether. But then we had no fresh air, being on the first floor, with a walkway passing our sliding door -- and no way to lock it into a safe open position.

Other than that, and a few other "interesting" problems with the hotel, the affair was very enjoyable. It's always great to see old friends and talk business. I had the additional pleasure of meeting up with some former students of mine that I hadn't seen in years. And the Festival of Books was comfortably warm, but breezy, nowhere near the oven conditions that prevailed last year. Sold books, talked to more friends, and generally had a good time.

And when I came home, with the dogs, Nickie ignored me -- as I'd expected he would. However, when I went into the study to turn on the desktop and get email, I found he'd expressed his disapproval of being left at home. There, on one of the dog's beds, was a little pile of cat poop.

I'm off tomorrow to the Nebula Conference and Awards Banquet in Los Angeles. Although the hotel is only about fifty miles away from where I live, I'll have to make close to a two hundred mile round trip because I have to take the greyhounds out to my daughter's house in San Jacinto in the Moreno Valley to stay. Actually, that's not too bad because it will give me a chance to take them out to dinner tomorrow night, before heading to LA Friday morning, and then spend Sunday evening with them on my return as well. I haven't seen this daughter and family since Christmas, so it will be a pleasant visit.

The Nebs are being held at the same time as the LA Times Festival of Books, and SFWAns will be signing at the Mysterious Galaxy Booth (#614) on the UCLA campus. My slot is Sunday at 10am for an hour, and I'll be signing THE GUILD OF XENOLINGUISTS. (I have a few copies of the newly reprinted backlist, so I may take them along too and see if anyone wants to buy them.)

Oh – Nicky the cat wants it noted that he will stay bravely at home by himself and keep an eye on the marauding sparrows and hummingbirds who infest our balcony. (Actually, a neighbor will look in on him once a day, so he won't be totally alone, but don't tell him I told you!)

I’m doing something I rarely do unless pressured -- reading a volume of critical essays about SF, written by UC Santa Barbara professor Frank McConnell. These are papers he presented at the Eaton Conference on SF over the years. Th Eaton is a scholarly meeting, held at UC Riverside, home of an enormous collection of all things skiffy, a conference that annually attracts critics and scholars from the Ivy League as well as from Europe. I’m not fond of this kind of meeting, and only go because it’s in my backyard, so to speak (and I should disclose that the Eaton Collection now houses my own papers, though it didn’t during the years Frank attended)

When Frank died (too early) a few years ago, I – and others who had known him – was asked to contribute a few memories to be used in the afterword of this volume, and I was glad to, You see Frank wasn’t like your regular dry scholar. He was first and foremost a court jester. His papers skewered the pompous academics and their overblown theories about SF, and at times he had the normally sedate conference rolling on the floor with laughter. But he knew the field better than most, and there was always insight in his papers, underneath the humor. I’ll give you one example. Under the guise of examining the influence of SF on society, he brought a bunch of tabloid papers into the room and proceeded to analyze stories from the likes of the National Enquirer (“Aliens Holding Elvis to Ransom on Moon Base!” “Two-headed Baby Born Talking!” kind of thing.) as seriously as if they were the productions of the Ivy League crowd about legitimate SF stories. I remember laughing so hard that I was choking.

The thing is, there was a strong kernel of truth and wisdom in all the humor. He had powerful things to say even as he was goring all the sacred oxen of the field. He was a kind man, too, befriending a very new and shy writer when the Ivy League attendees didn’t deign to notice she was there. Since the early days, I’ve read a paper or two of my own, and been keynote speaker, but in the beginning I was just a newbie who got lost in the crowd.

The conference isn’t the same without him.