Some of you may remember that some time ago I warned you (twice, actually) that I couldn’t take on a correspondence or even answer letters because my right hand was basically paralyzed and that was the one I wrote with. Well, it’s still paralyzed. But I have learned some useful ways of getting around that, to some extent, so I’m going to try to respond to a few communications now.
As you know I’m a beginner at this blog racket. I don’t know whether it’s etiquette to use people’s actual names, so I’m going to play it safe this time and disguise them.
First a thank you to one I will call DB. I recently published a short essay on the impetus given to the growth of science-fiction fandom, but said I knew I had published it somewhere already but couldn’t remember where,
DB could. He wrote, “I can tell you where you published this. It’s the opening of the second chapter of The Way the Future Was.”
Well, so it was. That’s a little embarrassing — I didn’t think I was really losing my marbles quite that fast — but anyway thanks!
And happens I have some news about that. I’ve just signed contracts with Baen Books for the reissue of some chunks of my earlier writing in the electronic book format, including The Way the Future Was.
And since others commented that they enjoyed reading this sort of ancient history now and then we’ll go ahead and publish the rest of the chapter, shortly.
I was tickled by the comments on my story about finally being granted a high-school diploma, seventy-odd years after becoming a dropout. A bunch of old buddies got off their duffs long enough to write things like: “Mazel tov. Now you can make something of yourself,” and, “A person of your intelligence should go on to higher education. By choosing the right major you can expect a good job when you graduate.” Etc.
How disrespectful these people are of their elders. But I love them anyway.
There were almost as many comments on my two postings about L. Ron Hubbard, A couple of them were quite unhappy with me, for example a woman who wrote: “I have been a subscriber.. Now I will unsubscribe.”
I’m truly sorry about that. I’m not trying to make anyone unhappy, so perhaps I should try to spell out what I do try to do.
When I talked about the Scientologists I mentioned that I knew there were reports of terrible things they are said to have done. I didn’t repeat any of the stories because I had no personal knowledge of how accurate they were, and they didn’t need to be reported as some kind of a public service since they were already widely published.
As we get on in the histories of John Campbell and his involvement with Scientology, etc., there will be some reports I will make about events concerning them. I won’t, however, print any unless I myself know them to be true or, alternatively, I have been told about them by people I trust who were on the scene. And if the latter, I will always tell you who my informants were.
Looking at this from the other side: When I wrote about the Writers (and Artists) of the Future contests, I’m sure the heads of that enterprise would have preferred that I be a little less candid about a few parts of it. But I was urging beginning writers to take advantage of it, and I couldn’t fail to mention what I thought were its (relatively few) drawbacks. So candor won.
Candor will generally win in whatever I write. I won’t publish scandal just for scandalousness’ sake, but I’ll try to tell the simple facts except when (rarely) they might cause more pain than benefit. That won’t be a big problem. Most of the sf people I know, which is way the largest fraction of recent generations of them, are basically quite decent folk.
