{"id":3899,"date":"2010-09-28T10:07:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T15:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=3899"},"modified":"2010-09-28T10:07:51","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T15:07:51","slug":"a-long-time-ago-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=3899","title":{"rendered":"A long time ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

in a galaxy far far away I lived next door to a woman named Martha Beck, <\/a> who billed herself as a “professional SF fan”.<\/p>\n

She was, by all appearances, a typical suburban hausfrau. <\/p>\n

Except, mostly, for her houseguests. <\/p>\n

She would have tons of them, and they were pretty odd folks. I got to meet many of them, though my folks felt my time there might have often overstayed my welcome.<\/p>\n

Martha loved Science Fiction and spent a lot of time at science fiction conventions. So she would have fans and friends and occasionally authors hanging out at her house. I met Wilson Tucker there, I met Mike Resnick there, I met several “Lesser” authors over gluten free bread (She had allergies) in her kitchen. <\/p>\n

At conventions, she would introduce me to people she knew. Like Robert and Ginny Heinlein. Martha introduced me as “The neighbor kid who tuckpointed her fireplace”<\/p>\n

I was, at the time, a Clarke fan, and remain so, Heinlein’s writing holds little interest for me still- but he was interested in masonry, and we spoke for a few minutes about the way a brick feels when you weld it to another brick, the tap and strike, the fact that when your hand leaves it you endow it with a permanence not allowed other building methods. I would never be a good bricklayer, but I understood, and it made me respect him, as I respect all layers of stone. He and his wife wandered off to other fans and Martha and I wandered off to other authors. <\/p>\n

Heinlein’s friendship with Martha was in part responsible for his placement of her famous sisterinlaw Helen<\/a> in a couple of his novels. <\/p>\n

“Famous” people aren’t any different from the rest of us, they just do things that the rest of us like to watch\/read\/etc. SF used to be full of fairly attainable folks because they didn’t make NBA star money, and they liked hanging around with fans who appreciated their work. SF cons were cool places to hang out, as a result, if you could get past the trekkies and trolls and other dipsticks. Having been out of the loop for many years now, I don’t know if this has changed, but I suspect not. <\/p>\n

HT Roberta, whose post<\/a> remided me of my momentary brush with RAH this morning, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

in a galaxy far far away I lived next door to a woman named Martha Beck, who billed herself as a “professional SF fan”. She was, by all appearances, a typical suburban hausfrau. Except, mostly, for her houseguests. She would have tons of them, and they were pretty odd folks. I got to meet many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}