Martin Morse Wooster

Many thanks for Challenger #24. I really enjoyed your account of The Barrington Bull and the bonding you had with Terry Carr about his days at Berkeley. Is there still an SF club at Berkeley and do they remember you?

The Little Men wasn’t directly affiliated with UC. I have no idea who belongs to the great Bay Area group these days, but I know Berkeley’s Quinn Yarbro still remembers me.

When I was at Beloit College in the late 1970s I produced a weekly newsletter for the Beloit Science Fiction and Fantasy Association on the school’s ditto machine. (Remember dittos?) The one issue I remember was that we had obtained a copy of Dark Star to show on campus and one of our members did an elaborate ditto master based on the premise that the film was a dark work about stars. No one knew the film was a comedy. Still, we got a good turnout.

“Benson Arizona, the stardust in your hair / My body flies the universe, my heart longs to be there …”

I missed the issue you did immediately after Hurricane Katrina, but it is good to see Don Markstein’s report that New Orleans is recovering somewhat although of course there is much work that needs to be done. My one visit to New Orleans was for Nolacon II. In fact, the first time I met you was when you led an expedition for breakfast at Brennan’s, where I had a very nice meal (any day that begins with Bananas Foster is a good day indeed!).

Also along on that excursion, Rose-Marie Donovan, the first of many times I’d walk into Brennan’s with her. Can’t wait till the next.

My guess is that New Orleans’ problem is how to preserve the special, vibrant, and interesting aspects that make it unique without turning it into a theme park or pastiche of itself. I don’t know the answer to what New Orleans needs to do, but then I’m not an urban planner or a politician.

James Bacon reminds us that the price of fame for really good writers is that they can’t just go to a convention and have fun. Terry Pratchett, after all, started out like in the mid-1960s as a teenage fan, if we are to believe Peter Weston. Now he can’t go anywhere without being mobbed. Friends of mine who know Neil Gaiman tell me that one reason he enjoys going to the annual meeting of the Baker Street Irregulars is that he can have a good weekend talking about books with smart people who won’t bug him for an autograph. My guess is that Alan Moore is the same way; he seems reclusive because if he goes out he gets mobbed by fanboys. So who can blame him for wanting to stay away from the public?

Me! I want him to sign my copy of Watchmen!

Joseph T. Major’s piece about “Anthony Godby Johnson” reminds us of how much we want to believe that horrific stories, particularly about maimed or disabled children, are true. But how much good would have been done if the people who donated money or time to “Johnson” used their cash to help struggling children in their neighborhood. Surely the lesson we must learn from the “Johnson” debacle is that just because someone says something in an e-mail, it’s not necessarily true?

I wish e-mails were necessarily true. If they were, Nigeria would have made me a billionaire several times over!