No, never met Jack Vance. But at the Norwescons I attended over a period of years, I met such folks as Samuel R. Delaney, Vonda McIntyre, F. M. Busby, Octavia Butler, Anne McAffrey, Orson Scott Card, L. Sprague and Catherine de Camp, and whole bunches of others. More names than I can remember. Once when I was heading into the men's john between workshops, Stanley Schmidt (then, editor of Analog) was just coming out and he held the door for me. Whether any of them would remember me is highly doubtful. I was merely one of many hundreds of people in attendance (dozens of people in Star Trek uniforms, at least five fully costumed Darth Vaders, and one young woman who could not be called "svelte" by any means being Red Sonja or some manner of Amazon warrior, carrying a huge broadsword and wearing a chain mail bikini. Considering her rather generous proportions, a bikini of any sort was not all that flattering, and I've never been able to figure out what sort of battle protection a chain mail bikini would afford. But what the hell! She was having her fantasy weekend, so more power to her!).

Yeah, Maggie, I'm still working on the book. The first draft is getting pretty huge-ish, and I'm going to have to do some heavy-duty editing. My first idea was to write a history of the folk scene in the Pacific Northwest, then when I got into it, I discovered that this would take far more in the way of research and general digging than I felt I wanted to do (blind men and elephants and all that!), so I decided to make it more of a memoir, or collection of personal reminiscences. The first draft has a lot of stuff that probably doesn't really relate all that much to the folk scene (such as when Walt Robertson went to visit Fred Melberg and brought his dog with him.   The dog spotted Fred's pet skunk—fully loaded—got a bit too aggressive with Skyo Grundoon Skunk, and Skyo defended himself by Dropping The Bomb. Doesn't really relate all that much to the folk scene, save that Walt was there at the time. But I'd hate to leave it out).

So I kinda doubt that the evening with Jerry and friends should really be included. But if I were to change my focus and do an autobiography (every detail I can think of), it would wind up being pretty big. I have a copy of Isaac Asimov's autobio—two volumes, both pretty thick—but he's Isaac Asimov. I'm not sure who'd necessarily want to read something that hefty about an obscure Northwest singer of folk songs, no matter how handsome and charming. Too thick to use to prop up the short leg of a table, but it should make a dandy door-stop.

< rant on >
As to Jerry Pournelle's politics, Jerry was always well-informed and he always had the facts and figures right there. Check him out and he's accurate. He's got the data. Arguing politics with him was a bit like trying to argue with William F. Buckley, except, as I mentioned earlier, Jerry's voice tends to go up in pitch when he gets excited. We argued politics a fair amount over many a beer at the Blue Moon, and I must say that, unlike arguing with a lot of hard-charging conservatives, I learned a lot from Jerry.

That isn't to say that I wound up agreeing with him. Our different political viewpoints sprang, not from the collection of shallow bumper-sticker slogans that so many people take as Gospel, but from differences in our deeper philosophical positions. An example of this is that I've always believed that humans and human societies can improve (in fact, I've always taken that as a given in science fiction, and much good SF deals with that). It's not guaranteed that we will. But I believe we can. We should strive for perfection, even if we know that "perfection" (however we define it) is unattainable; nevertheless, humanity would be far better for the striving than it would otherwise be

Jerry, on the other hand, seemed to have the viewpoint that humans and human societies may have the capacity to "improve" (whatever that means), but human nature is such that they won't. There will undoubtedly be scientific discoveries and technological improvements, but Man himself and human societies will always have the same negative aspects—as will any alien species we might happen to meet. So we'd better stay on our guard and prepare for the future with this in mind.

Now, I'm not sure that I'm stating Jerry's ideas accurately (he'd have to do that for himself), but that's how they struck me. Thinking back over many conversations, I think I'm quite probably more optimistic about the future than Jerry is.

But—he may be right!

Lemme put it this way:   I may have missed out on a lot of good reading, but I have not read all of Jerry's stuff. Case in point. While browsing the shelves in a favorite bookstore some years ago, I noted that Jerry had compiled an anthology of stories entitled "There Will Be War." I looked at it for a moment, muttered something like, "Oh, crap, Jerry!" and stuck it back on the shelf. He's come out with something like eight volumes of stuff with the same title, same theme.

He seems to accept the idea of the inevitability of war. That "there will be war," and "there will always be war." I ask "Why? If we fancy ourselves to be intelligent beings, can't we do better than that!??"
< rant off >

But getting back to our regular broadcast:

Barbara and I watched "Robin Hood. Prince of Thieves" (NetFlix) last night. They played kind of fast and loose with the Robin Hood legend, but it did have some pretty interesting twists to it. Kevin Costner was Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman was marvelous, and I'd pay just to watch Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio breathe. Alan Rickman (the Sheriff of Nottingham) can play villains like no other actor, Geraldine MacEwan was a real snort, and Sean Connery makes a cameo appearance (took a second to recognize him!). No mention of the villainous King John, however. Pretty good swashbuckler. Fun!

Don Firth