Tiptree's Paper Clip

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I am the proud owner of a paper clip once owned by Alice Sheldon, a giant of science fiction under the name of James Tiptree, Jr. Sheldon kept a physical distance from her literary genre of choice. She didn't attend conventions and very seldom met with anybody, fan or writer, from the community. I never even came close to meeting her. So you may be wondering how I came in possession of this literary relic. Well...

Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper met Sheldon once in the late seventies or early eighties, at her place in McLean, Virginia. Her house was mostly glass and sat over a stream that ran through the living room. Raccoons would come into it at night. In an interview published in the Temporary Culture chapbook She Saved Us From World War Three Gardner said, “…we went out there and spent the afternoon. We had burgers, I think, which they grilled, and we sat around for a while. I found out during the afternoon that she kept her Nebula Award in a closet with galoshes piled on top of it.”

He also said that Sheldon was flamboyant, even theatrical. “She really dominated your attention. She was magnetic. […] While we were eating our hamburgers… She had put out paper napkins and I was nervous, so I sat nervously shredding a napkin. She told me later that after we left she had picked up the shreds of the napkin and put them in a baggie and written “Napkin Shredded by Gardner Dozois” and the date on a label. Whether that still exists or not, I have no idea.”  

Such souvenirs were obviously important to Sheldon. When Gardner and Susan started to leave, she looked around hurriedly for something to give him as a memento and ended up handing him an oversized blue plastic paper clip—the one you see enshrined above.

Such souvenirs were not important to Gardner So he gave it to me.

Thus it was that this luminous object passed from a believer to an infidel to a believer again. This is the Wheel of Samsara in action.

 

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A Comprehensive Dictionary of Cat

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After years of labor, I have finally assembled a comprehensive dictionary of Cat. It is as follows:

now?: Oh, please, sir. I'm ever so hungry. Will no one feed the nice cat?

 me-out: I'm only going to say this once, but I'm going to say it once as many hundred times as it takes: Open this door immediately.

hark!: Damn your eyes, why did you make me do this? Your impudence will not be soon forgotten. Clean up this hairball immediately. I'm going off to a quiet spot to plot vengeance.

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Barry Longyear R. I. P.

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Barry Longyear is dead. I wasn't going to note his passing because he and I were never close. We bumped into each other on panels at Worldcons a couple of times, but that was it. However, the current issue of Locus has, in addition to its obituary, only one appreciation, though a good one written by his agent, Richard Curtis. His star has since faded, but Longyear was once considered to be one of the greats in science fiction. He deserves more than that.

So I'll say a very few words here. If early on you're offended, please keep reading. I promise all will be made right. 

Back in the 1970s, Longyear was one of George Scithers' two most celebrated discoveries, along with John M. Ford, in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. As a writer, his every story, especially the Circusworld ones set on the planet Baraboo, hit the sweet spot with fans. As a human being, he was an absolute asshole.

The stories of the man's offensive behavior and curmudgeonly insults of his writing peers (in all fairness, he did punch up as well as down, though at some of the most beloved figures in the field) were legion. Thankfully, time has erased most of the specifics for me. Though I vividly remember the fanzine article he wrote about the Hugo Award, where he said that if he won one and had only enough room in his suitcase for the trophy or his soiled underwear, he would choose the underwear.

But then he went into rehab.

He went in belligerent and offensive, and he came out likeable. Again, I never knew Barry Longyear very well. But anyone could see that person he used to be was not the real him. The real him, it turned out, was a nice guy.

That nice guy, according to the Locus obit, founded Dragon Slayers, a Narcotics Anonymous group that he selflessly helped run for decades. That tells us a lot.

Longyear's career highpoint came when his novella, Enemy Mine, in which a human and an alien at war with each other must make common cause in order to survive. won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and John W. Campbell Awards. A low point ensued when it was made into a movie. Word at the time was that the suits looked at the script and said, "Where's the mine?" and so one was inserted. Reportedly, the whole thing went down from there. The movie was a flop and by all accounts deserved to be one.

Curtis relates, I'm sure correctly, that Longyear wrote two sequels to the story and his own version of what the movie should have been. A year ago, Twentieth Century Studios decided they wanted to do a remake of the movie. Contracts were signed in time for the ailing author to know that there was a good chance his story would be done up as it deserved. I could have wished that he had lived long enough to see the movie and that the movie was everything it should have been. But writers live on hope, and Longyear lived long enough to experience that hope one last time.

Go with God, Barry. I hope your movie is one of the great ones.

Above: The picture of Barry Longyear was taken from Hazelden Publishing.

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