Books I'll Never Write: SCIENCE FICTION IN THE EIGHTIES

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This begins an occasional-at-best series of brief introductions to books I could but almost certainly won't ever write. Enjoy!

Introduction: The Simple Act of Going to Dinner

Friends!

I was at a Capclave one year (this was before the alt-sex group hung an NYC policeman from a water sprinkler, triggering a massive flood and evacuation of the hotel in the middle of the night; see chapter 14) and a group of writers, editors, friends, and such assembled to go out to dinner. There were ten of us in all--two cars' worth. Jack Dann found a restaurant in D. C. and made reservations. Chatting, we ambled to the parking lot. Along the way, somebody started to tell a mesmerizing story that obviously wasn't going to finish anytime soon. As a result, Jack, Ellen Datlow, and everybody else wanted to be in the car being driven by the storyteller, even though that meant that several of them would have to sit on each others' laps. I was driving the second car. Only Tim Sullivan was willing to ride with me, and he only because he took pity on me.

I turned out of the parking lot, followed by the overloaded second car. Feeling dreadfully sorry for myself, I made my way to the ring road around Washington. Then a thought occurred to me.

Turning to Tim, I said, “You and I are the only two who know where the restaurant is, aren't we?”

In a puzzled tone, Tim said, “Yes?”

“Good,” I said. And I floored it.

How fast was I going? Eighty? Ninety? More? It didn't matter. My faithless friends had no choice but to match speeds with me.

When, finally, I pulled off at the exit ramp and came to a stop at the traffic signal, the other car pulled up alongside me and everyone within it, laughing, gave me the finger.

That was what it was like in the science fiction community of the early 1980s. We were all young and full of beans. Science fiction fandom gave us a matrix within which we could meet, mate, love, quarrel, feud, and be geniuses-in-utero. And, by God, we took advantage of it. The world we created was a small and private one, admittedly, the sort of personal Eden that never gets documented.

Except, this once, here and now, in this book.

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