Tyree's Tuppence
by Tyree Campbell
It's Not Just Me, Dammit!
One of the perks of being mumblety-mumble years old is that I get to say "I can remember when . . . " [Oh, stop groaning. This is good for you. I promise! Bear with me, please].
. . . you could walk into a drugstore or a five-and-dime, step up to the soda fountain, order a 5-cent Coke and, for another five cents, the soda jerk [yes, that was a job title] would squirt a bit of cherry or lime flavoring into it and even stir the concoction for you.
. . . you could go to a drive-in movie and make out . . . and/or watch others make out [a bunch of us even had number cards and a bullhorn: "That's a 9.2 on the muff-diving in the blue and silver Chevy; you were docked three-tenths for coming out of the tuck too soon, and five-tenths for too much splash"] . . . and if it was a double-feature, you almost always got . . . never mind. But it was ever a good idea to know something of the movie plotline and the names of the principal actors, just in case the parents asked.
[Did you know that, strangely enough, you could buy a dozen eggs in 1947 for only ten cents cheaper than you can buy them now? Weird . . . ]
. . . you could understand song lyrics. You actually wanted to understand song lyrics. And you could sing them in the house. In front of your parents. On Sundays.
. . . the gas station employed people whose actual job was to put gas in your vehicle's gas tank for you.
[Um . . . okay, a five-and-dime was a sort of general store where you could buy pretty much anything, just like Walmart today, only without the hype and all the foreign goods. F. W. Woolworth's was such a store. When such stores first opened, most everything they sold cost a nickel or a dime, thus the moniker. In the excellent History Of The World, Part I, Mel Brooks posited such a store in ancient Rome--called, of course, the V and X].
Which brings me halfway of the long way around, to Bud Webster and RavenCon, in Richmond, Virginia. I had the honor of attending RavenCon recently, and
[Okay . . . "moniker" is a slang term, almost argot, and means "name"][don't they say "moniker" any more? Sheesh!]
with John Bushore's assistance ran the two tables next to Bud's. You might recall Bud's name as an author--he pens some very well-crafted speculative fiction, as you'll see in Aoife's Kiss next year--and as an editor, for he helped Mike Allen edit Suzette Haden Elgin's The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook. If you haven't already seen the photos from the convention, check out the one of me and Mike clowning around, and holding a copy of the handbook. Right. That Bud Webster.
Bud Webster sells used books.
At most conventions, there's always somebody, and often more than one, who sells used books. So you can browse the shelves, and maybe pick up a Charles Sheffield or an early Mercedes Lackey that you missed, or fill in a gap in your "best of" collection--Terry Carr, Martin Greenberg, Gardner Dozois; names like that. But Bud's stuff goes back to the Good Old Days. He carries books published by Pyramid Books, and Lancer, and Pocket Books, and Fawcett, and Berkley. He carries some books with cover prices of half a dollar or less. He carries some gems.
Which brings us almost the rest of the way around, to Judith Merril.
You and I, we're Writers. We write science fiction, and some fantasy, and perhaps a bit of horror. We did not invent these genres, nor did we develop them. We're simply the latest generation in a long line of Writers. Where and when this lineage began is open to debate and discussion--has in fact been discussed in previous Tuppences. But in the 1920's science fiction and the pulps found one another [E. E. "Doc" White, frex], and the genre put out roots and tendrils in the 1930's [Stanley G. Weinbaum, frex], and by the 1940s science fiction was in the full throttle of an algae bloom. You know the names, because you know where you came from: Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Kuttner, Pohl, Kornbluth, Van Vogt, Vance, and on and on . . . our Valhalla. Some brave women, too. C. L. Moore, frex.
And Judith Merril.
Well, now. Back in 1960, back when you could still buy a box of cereal called Kellogg's Pep, Pyramid Books had the incredibly good sense to publish Out Of Bounds, a collection of Ms Merril's short stories [for, incredibly, thirty five cents a copy]. The collection included an introduction by Theodore Sturgeon, of whom you may have heard.
[At that time, Pyramid Books listed its address as Pyramid Books, 444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, N.Y.]
[No, there are not twenty one other New Yorks. See, back before there were Zip Codes, there were things called Zones. Cities were divided into them for the convenience of the United States Posthole Service. Remember the Elvis Presley song, "Return To Sender"? Remember the lyrics:
"Return to sender
Address unknown
No such number
No such zone."
Riiiight. That's what those lyrics are referring to. Bet you always wondered about that. Like, what was The King thinking?]
[Why are zones important for you to know about? Maybe they're not important. But if you're writing a story set in, say, the 1940s, as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did for one of its episodes, you wouldn't want to refer to an address that has Zip Codes, as the writers of ST:DS9 did. Oops].
[Posthole. It was a joke. Never mind . . . ]
Sorry. Got carried away . . .
Theodore Sturgeon, right. He knew something about writing [which is rather like saying Babe Ruth knew something about baseball]. In that introduction to Out Of Bounds, here's what he says Writers have to have [yes, we've finally [!] come all the way around]:
1. A respect for the craft. Sturgeon defines this simply as knowing that what you write could have a greater effect than a nuclear weapon.
2. Something to say. It's what you do with what you have, and the more you respect what you have, the more significant is what you do.
3. Empathy. A Writer "must be able to see out through other people's eyes and feel with their fingertips." [Italics mine].
4. Humility. Sturgeon describes this, respective of Writers, as the certainty that as one continues to write, one continues to grow and improve and learn.
5. No title. Sturgeon doesn't title this one. He simply states that "there must be the acquisition of the techniques of fiction, and the most profound understanding that a story about an Idea or a Thing might be a tract or an article or an anecdote, but unless and until it is about people, it is not fiction. [Italics mine].
This poor volume of Out Of Bounds that I bought from Bud Webster at RavenCon has cracked binding, and some of the pages have come a bit loose from my turning them [Judith Merril wrote, among others, a story called "That Only A Mother." That one story got her into whatever Heaven exists. The rest of this collection ain't bad, either]. The book literally is falling apart from age. Maybe it has been or will be [should be] reissued. I dunno. We lose so much from our past in this present . . .
Well. So you want to be a Writer? Heed Sturgeon's Five Points. Make them points of your Checklist. You'll do just fine.
Past Tuppence:
March 2007
December 2006
September 2006
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001
Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:
The Dog at the Foot of the Bed
by Tyree Campbell
Wondrouse Web Worlds Vol. 6
The Martian Women
by Tyree Campbell
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3
Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology
Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell
Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2