Greg Benford c/o Challenger

Mike Resnick’s article [“Bathrooms I Have Known”] is one of the funniest I’ve ever seen in a fanzine. I’ve been in some terrible johns in this world, mostly in Asia or the old Soviet Union. The worst was in a marbled conference center in Soviet Georgia cloaked with huge banners proclaiming the wonders of socialism, where the Soviet Academy of Sciences held a big meeting. I was a foreign guest and marveled at the alabaster wonder of the place – until I went to the loo. Clearly, as in much of the unlamented Soviet Union, maintenance was a problem. The toilets had overflowed and delegates had taken to voiding in the booths, so the marble room assaulted your nose upon entering. Keeping up a face before me (The Enemy), one elite professor from Moscow apologized, saying it was a “momentary” problem. He turned to a colleague, not knowing I spoke Russian, and said, “It’s always like this here, a pig sty!”