Roots and a Few Vines My Lif - Mike Resnick, ebook
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ROOTS AND A FEW VINES
by Mike Resnick
So I'm sitting there inWinnipeg, resplendent in my tuxedo,
and morbidly wondering how many fans have called me "Mr. Resnick"
instead of "Mike" since the worldcon began three days ago.
I don't _feel_ like a Mister. I feel like a fan who is
cheating by sitting here with all the pros, waiting for Bob
Page 1
Silverberg to announce the winner of the Best Editor Hugo. He goes
through the names: Datlow, Dozois, Resnick, Rusch, Schmidt.
He opens the envelope and reads off Kris Rusch's name, and
suddenly I am walking up to the stage. Bob is sure I thought he
called out _my_ name, and looks like he is considering clutching
the Hugo to his breast and running off with it (although that is
actually a response common to all pros when they are in proximity
to a Hugo), but finally he sighs and hands it over to me, and I
start thanking Ed Ferman and all the voters.
What am I doing here, I wonder, picking up a Hugo for a lady
who is half my age and has twice my talent and is drop-dead
gorgeous to boot? How in blazes did I ever get to be an Elder
Statesman?
* * *
Well, it began in 1962, which, oddly enough, was _not_ just
last year, no matter how it feels. Carol and I had met at the
UniversityofChicagoin 1960. We'd gone to the theater on our
first date, and wound up in the Morrison Hotel's coffee shop,
where we talked science fiction until they threw us out at 5 in
the morning. It was the first time either of us realized that
someone else out there read that crazy Buck Rogers stuff (though
we might have guessed, since they continued to print it month
after month, and two sales per title would hardly seem enough to
keep the publishers in business.)
Well, 1962 rolls around, and so does a futureCampbellwinner
named Laura...but the second biggest event of the year comes when
Page 2
Ace Books, under the editorship of Don Wollheim, starts pirating a
bunch of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, and a whole generation gets
to learn about Tarzan and Frank Frazetta and John Carter and Roy
Krenkal and David Innes all at once.
But the important thing, the thing that unquestionably shaped
my adult life, was that one of the books had a little blurb on the
inside front cover extolling ERB's virtues, and it was signed
"Camille Cazedessus, Editor of _ERB-dom_". Well, you didn't have
to be a genius to figure out that _ERB-dom_, at least in that
context, was an obvious reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs.
A whole magazine devoted to one of my favorite writers? I
could barely wait until the next morning, when I took the subway
downtown and entered the Post Office News, Chicago's largest
magazine store. I looked for _ERB-dom_ next to _Time, Life, Look,
Newsweek,_ and _Playboy._ Wasn't there. I looked for it next to
_Analog, Galaxy,_ and _F&SF._ No dice. Wasn't anywhere near
_Forbes_ or _Fortune_ or _Business Week_ either.
So I go up to the manager and tell him I'm looking for _ERB-
dom_, and he checks his catalogs and tells me there ain't no such
animal.
I grab him by the arm, drag him over to the paperbacks, pull
out the operative Burroughs title, turn to the inside front cover,
and smite him with a mighty _"Aha!"_
So he promises to get cracking and find out who publishes
this magazine and start stocking it, and I return to our
Page 3
subterranean penthouse (i.e., basement apartment) to await the
Good News.
Which doesn't come.
I nag Post Office News incessantly. I nag my local bookstore.
I nag the public library. I even nag my mother. (This seems
counter-productive, but she has been nagging _me_ for 20 years and
fair is fair.)
Finally, I look at my watch and it is half-past 1962 and
there is still no sign of _ERB-dom_, so I write to the editor,
Miss Cazedessus (so okay, until then I'd never heard of a _guy_
named Camille), in care of Ace Books, and a month later the first
five issues of _ERB-dom_ arrive in the mail, the very first
fanzines I have ever seen, along with a long, friendly letter that
constantly uses the arcane word "worldcon".
Within two months I have written three long articles for
_ERB-dom #6_ and have become its associate editor. There is a
worldcon in Chicago that summer, not a 20-minute subway ride from
where we live, but the future Campbell winner chooses August 17 to
get herself born, and we do not go to the worldcon. When she is 8
days old I decide to forgive her and lovingly show her off to her
grandparents, and she vomits down the back of my Hawaiian shirt
(which, in retrospect, could well have been an editorial comment),
and it is 27 years before I willingly touch her again, but that is
another story.
There is one other thing that happens in 1962. We are living
at the corner of North Shore and Greenview in the Rogers Park area
Page 4
of Chicago, and right across street of us is this old apartment
building, and on the third Saturday of every month strange-looking
men and women congregate there. They have long hair, and most of
them are either 90 pounds overweight or 50 pounds underweight, and
often they are carrying books under their arms. We decide they are
members of SNCC or CORE, which are pretty popular organizations at
the time, and that they are meeting there to figure out how to
dodge the draft, and that the books they carry are either pacifist
tracts or ledgers with the names and addresses of all the left-
wing groups that have contributed money to them.
We have to go all the way to Washington D.C. a year later and
attend Discon I to find out that they are not draft dodgers (well,
not _primarily_, anyway) but rather Chicago fandom, and that they
have been meeting 80 feet from our front door for 2 years.
* * *
So I wend my way back through the audience, and I find my
seat, and I hand Kris Rusch's Hugo to Carol, because I am also up
for Best Short Story, and I think I've got a better chance at
this, and when I run up to accept the award it will look tacky to
already be carrying a Hugo. Besides, Charles Sheffield is sitting
right next to us, and he is up for Best Novelette, and he is
getting very nervous, and wants to stroke the Hugo for luck, or
maybe is considering just walking out with it and changing the
name plates at a future date. (In fact, I am convinced that if he
does not win his own, neither Kris nor I will ever see _her_ Hugo
Page 5
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ROOTS AND A FEW VINES
by Mike Resnick
So I'm sitting there inWinnipeg, resplendent in my tuxedo,
and morbidly wondering how many fans have called me "Mr. Resnick"
instead of "Mike" since the worldcon began three days ago.
I don't _feel_ like a Mister. I feel like a fan who is
cheating by sitting here with all the pros, waiting for Bob
Page 1
Silverberg to announce the winner of the Best Editor Hugo. He goes
through the names: Datlow, Dozois, Resnick, Rusch, Schmidt.
He opens the envelope and reads off Kris Rusch's name, and
suddenly I am walking up to the stage. Bob is sure I thought he
called out _my_ name, and looks like he is considering clutching
the Hugo to his breast and running off with it (although that is
actually a response common to all pros when they are in proximity
to a Hugo), but finally he sighs and hands it over to me, and I
start thanking Ed Ferman and all the voters.
What am I doing here, I wonder, picking up a Hugo for a lady
who is half my age and has twice my talent and is drop-dead
gorgeous to boot? How in blazes did I ever get to be an Elder
Statesman?
* * *
Well, it began in 1962, which, oddly enough, was _not_ just
last year, no matter how it feels. Carol and I had met at the
UniversityofChicagoin 1960. We'd gone to the theater on our
first date, and wound up in the Morrison Hotel's coffee shop,
where we talked science fiction until they threw us out at 5 in
the morning. It was the first time either of us realized that
someone else out there read that crazy Buck Rogers stuff (though
we might have guessed, since they continued to print it month
after month, and two sales per title would hardly seem enough to
keep the publishers in business.)
Well, 1962 rolls around, and so does a futureCampbellwinner
named Laura...but the second biggest event of the year comes when
Page 2
Ace Books, under the editorship of Don Wollheim, starts pirating a
bunch of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, and a whole generation gets
to learn about Tarzan and Frank Frazetta and John Carter and Roy
Krenkal and David Innes all at once.
But the important thing, the thing that unquestionably shaped
my adult life, was that one of the books had a little blurb on the
inside front cover extolling ERB's virtues, and it was signed
"Camille Cazedessus, Editor of _ERB-dom_". Well, you didn't have
to be a genius to figure out that _ERB-dom_, at least in that
context, was an obvious reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs.
A whole magazine devoted to one of my favorite writers? I
could barely wait until the next morning, when I took the subway
downtown and entered the Post Office News, Chicago's largest
magazine store. I looked for _ERB-dom_ next to _Time, Life, Look,
Newsweek,_ and _Playboy._ Wasn't there. I looked for it next to
_Analog, Galaxy,_ and _F&SF._ No dice. Wasn't anywhere near
_Forbes_ or _Fortune_ or _Business Week_ either.
So I go up to the manager and tell him I'm looking for _ERB-
dom_, and he checks his catalogs and tells me there ain't no such
animal.
I grab him by the arm, drag him over to the paperbacks, pull
out the operative Burroughs title, turn to the inside front cover,
and smite him with a mighty _"Aha!"_
So he promises to get cracking and find out who publishes
this magazine and start stocking it, and I return to our
Page 3
subterranean penthouse (i.e., basement apartment) to await the
Good News.
Which doesn't come.
I nag Post Office News incessantly. I nag my local bookstore.
I nag the public library. I even nag my mother. (This seems
counter-productive, but she has been nagging _me_ for 20 years and
fair is fair.)
Finally, I look at my watch and it is half-past 1962 and
there is still no sign of _ERB-dom_, so I write to the editor,
Miss Cazedessus (so okay, until then I'd never heard of a _guy_
named Camille), in care of Ace Books, and a month later the first
five issues of _ERB-dom_ arrive in the mail, the very first
fanzines I have ever seen, along with a long, friendly letter that
constantly uses the arcane word "worldcon".
Within two months I have written three long articles for
_ERB-dom #6_ and have become its associate editor. There is a
worldcon in Chicago that summer, not a 20-minute subway ride from
where we live, but the future Campbell winner chooses August 17 to
get herself born, and we do not go to the worldcon. When she is 8
days old I decide to forgive her and lovingly show her off to her
grandparents, and she vomits down the back of my Hawaiian shirt
(which, in retrospect, could well have been an editorial comment),
and it is 27 years before I willingly touch her again, but that is
another story.
There is one other thing that happens in 1962. We are living
at the corner of North Shore and Greenview in the Rogers Park area
Page 4
of Chicago, and right across street of us is this old apartment
building, and on the third Saturday of every month strange-looking
men and women congregate there. They have long hair, and most of
them are either 90 pounds overweight or 50 pounds underweight, and
often they are carrying books under their arms. We decide they are
members of SNCC or CORE, which are pretty popular organizations at
the time, and that they are meeting there to figure out how to
dodge the draft, and that the books they carry are either pacifist
tracts or ledgers with the names and addresses of all the left-
wing groups that have contributed money to them.
We have to go all the way to Washington D.C. a year later and
attend Discon I to find out that they are not draft dodgers (well,
not _primarily_, anyway) but rather Chicago fandom, and that they
have been meeting 80 feet from our front door for 2 years.
* * *
So I wend my way back through the audience, and I find my
seat, and I hand Kris Rusch's Hugo to Carol, because I am also up
for Best Short Story, and I think I've got a better chance at
this, and when I run up to accept the award it will look tacky to
already be carrying a Hugo. Besides, Charles Sheffield is sitting
right next to us, and he is up for Best Novelette, and he is
getting very nervous, and wants to stroke the Hugo for luck, or
maybe is considering just walking out with it and changing the
name plates at a future date. (In fact, I am convinced that if he
does not win his own, neither Kris nor I will ever see _her_ Hugo
Page 5
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