travel Peter frigging Beagle, man.

Posted August 23, 2006 • Comments Off on Peter frigging Beagle, man.
It has always been one of my key aims at these conventions to say ‘thank you’ to authors I have a chance to spot whose work has meant something to me. When they’re in panels or speaking or (as in the case of Harry Harrison* a few years ago, eating a sandwich in a cafe), they’re accessible, people swarm them with books to sign, and I want to be the one who just says a few grateful words, expecting nothing in return.

I have never once had the courage to actually do this.

*Harry Harrison’s most famous work is probably Make Room, Make Room, the basis for the film Soylent Green, but I wanted to thank him for West of Eden and its sequels, some of the finest alternate-history world-building I have ever encountered.

But today I just listened to a short, funny panel where a few writers read short stories they’d written in 30 minutes given mystery ingredients. Mr. Beagle was the only writer there whom I’d heard of, and his story (My Fair Lady, set in Casablanca, starring Asimov’s robot from Age of Steel) was by far the most carefully crafted and least funny (a very good thing).

(Peter S. Beagle, in case you don’t know, wrote The Last Unicorn.)

At the end I somehow poked myself in between a woman with three books to sign who was apparently an acquaintance and asked a lot of very personal questions and a man with an two-foot pile of books for two of the authors to sign.

And I just said thank you.

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