Pulling Seivarden out of the snow had cost me time and money that I could ill afford, and for what? Left to her own devices she would find herself another hit or three of kef, and she would find her way into another place like that grimy tavern and get herself well and truly killed. If that was what she wanted I had no right to prevent her. But if she had wanted to die, why hadn’t she done the thing cleanly, registered her intention and gone to the medic as anyone would? I didn’t understand.
There was a good deal I didn’t understand, and nineteen years pretending to be human hadn’t taught me as much as I’d thought.
For my parents, Mary P. and David N. Dietzler, who didn’t live to see this book but were always sure it would exist.
NEBULA AWARDS 2013 DISTINGUISHED GUEST
FINDING FRQNKIE:
REMEMBERING FRANK M. ROBINSON
ROBIN WAYNE BAILEY
Early Sunday morning on June 30, 2014, my longtime friend and mentor, Frank M. Robinson, known to many of us as “Frqnkie,” passed away. It was Gay Pride Weekend in San Francisco, and Frank would have approved of the timing. He had the largest parade in the country to send him on his way.
Frank Robinson, born 1926, was also a longtime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. More, he was chosen to receive an honor as “Distinguished Guest” at the 2014 Nebula Awards ceremonies, an honor quite shamefully overlooked as the evening went on and the various other awards were presented. Due to sudden ill health, Frank was unable to attend the event. He had hoped right up until the last moment to attend for just a day, but that was not to be. Finally, realizing that he would not have the strength, he prepared a brief acceptance speech, but only after the ceremonies ended were we able to get his remarks out to the public via the SFWA.org website. Here are those remarks.
Some time ago a group of aeronautical engineers were asked if they had ever read any of Bob Heinlein’s SF books for kids. 90 % of them raised their hands. Some years later, I later interviewed Arthur C. Clarke for Playboy and he asked me half a dozen science questions. The last one was more of a parable than a question: What was the one thing could a fish never conceive of? The answer was “Fire!” The parable was that there were things in the universe of which man could never conceive of. It occurred to me then that science fiction and its writers were the imagination of this world. I still think that. All of you writers are a part of that imagination, and each and every one of you deserves a gold star. I can’t write much more—I’m crying as I write this.
—Frank M. Robinson
I first met Frank some thirty-five years ago when I was selling my very first stories. Wilson “Bob” Tucker introduced us. The two had known each other since they were both youngsters. Frank and Bob became the grandfathers I never had. Bob taught me what it meant to be a fan and Frank taught me important lessons about how to be a professional. “Stop thinking of yourself as a science fiction writer,” he once told me, “and start thinking of yourself as a writer.”
He exemplified that lesson. Frank moved with elegant ease from novels to short stories, from thrillers and mysteries to science fiction and non-fiction. He frequently blended genres. His first novel, The Power (1956), and its later sort-of-sequel, Waiting (2000), both mingled equal parts science fiction and mystery-thriller to potent effect. Both books also received high accolades. George Pal turned The Power into a very successful film starring George Hamilton, Michael Rennie and Suzanne Pleshette; National Public Radio named Waiting, upon its release, as one of its Notable Books and Best Summer Reads. Frank also gave us two highly praised non-fiction books, Pulp Culture: The Art of the Fiction Magazines (2001) and Science Fiction of the 20th Century (1999), both highly prized by collectors and genre historians. His science fiction novel, The Dark Beyond the Stars (1991) won one of the first Lambda Literary Awards ever presented to a work of science fiction and, to my knowledge, it has never gone out of print.
In 1971, working with his friend and collaborator, Thomas N. Scortia, Frank hit the literary jack-pot when their novel, The Glass Inferno, came to the attention of famed producer, Irwin Allen. Allen, as Frank often told it, was looking for a “big hit” to follow his mega-hit, The Poseidon Adventure. In a tale both hilarious and too convoluted to recount here, their novel and a similar novel, The Tower, by Richard Martin Stern, were combined into one screenplay and became an even bigger mega-hit film, The Towering Inferno. That movie established Frank as a writerly force. He and Scortia would go on to produce other highly successful works, such as Blow-Out, The Nightmare Factor, The Prometheus Crisis, and The Gold Crew, which was translated into film as The Fifth Missile.
Although Frank wrote in a wide variety of other arenas with collaborators and alone, his love of science fiction was life-long. At age sixteen, he began work as an office boy at Ziff-Davis in Chicago where he met and got to know legendary editors Ray Palmer and Howard Browne. He called that job “the closest I’ve ever come to Nirvana.” Frank also talked about how, times being hard for everyone, he would smuggle the science fiction magazines out of the offices under his jacket to read and devour. At the same time, he found his way into Chicago and Illinois fandom. Throughout his life, he was a reader and collector of pulp magazines, books, and art, amassing over time one of the finest pulp collections in the world. As he used to say, “I never met a mint-condition pulp magazine I didn’t like.”
While still in Chicago, he also worked for a number of “men’s” magazines, such as Rogue, Cavalier, and Playboy. He spoke most fondly of his time at Playboy where he wrote and edited the famous “Playboy Advisor” column. He once joked to me that the two most successful sex advice columnists of all time—himself and Seattle’s Dan Savage—were both gay men.
That’s right, Frank was gay. No secret to anyone who knew him, really. I mentioned at the beginning of this appreciation that among his friends he often spelled his name stylistically with the letter “q.” It was his way, in less tolerant times, of acknowledging his sexuality. Frank was a quiet and unassuming activist who never really sought the spotlight he so richly deserved. I asked him about that once. He said, “I just don’t carry a bull-horn in my pocket.” He didn’t need a bull-horn. Frank had the Power of Words. In underground newspapers, he chronicled the early gay rights movement in Chicago and across America. As a speech-writer for San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk, he helped to change the world.
I visited Frank as often as I could and spoke with him regularly by phone. I’ll never forget the morning he called me up, shouting into the phone, “Robin! They’re making a movie—and I’m in it!” Frank sounded like a little kid that morning, a little kid with a very deep and rumbling voice, but a kid brimming with excitement. That movie was Milk, starring Sean Penn, James Franco, and Emil Hirsh. As he explained to me, the producers first approached him about serving as a technical advisor, because Frank had known Harvey Milk closely, been in the camera shop, and lived in the Castro through that period of time. However, they soon made him an “extra” on the set, a sort of ageless “everyman” appearing in the crowds in key scenes. Then, in one of those scenes, Franco began feeding Frank lines. Those lines wound up on the cutting room floor, but they were enough to earn Frank SAG membership, and he was dancing again about that.
Those were very happy days for Frank. He called every other evening with news from the set or to tell me he was cooking fried chicken dinner for Sean Penn or that Dustin Lance Black was in his living room. Frank was clearly star-struck without ever seeming to realize that in his own right he was one of the stars. If you have access to the DVD version of the film, watch the extra features where you’ll find an extended interview with Frank.
I called Frank one of my grandfathers. During my very first visit to his home, he and I were strolling around the Castro, and he eventually guided me into A Different Light, which was one of the great gay bookstores in the neighborhood. The clerk, who knew Frank well, hurried to greet us, asking as he turned to me, “Is this your grandson?” Frank
barked his trade-mark short laugh. “Hah!” I looked up at him and meekly asked in front of the clerk if it was okay if I called him “Grand-dad.” Frank grinned a crooked grin and answered sotto voce, “Well, all right, but not too loud and not in public.” It became one of our personal jokes.
In 1994, while I was serving SFWA as Central-South regional director, I proposed that the organization establish a way to honor older writers who had once had an impact on the field but who had, over the years, faded from the limelight. We had often heard Heinlein’s famous admonition to “pay it forward.” I felt strongly that it was also important that we “pay it backward.” I suggested a program that sought out older writers and brought them back into the spotlight, particularly at the Nebula Awards. Ann Crispin coined the name, Author Emeritus, and it stuck. The following year, 1995, we brought Emil Petaja to New York to honor him as our first Author Emeritus. As it turned out, Emil Petaja also lived in the Castro only a few blocks from Frank, and although Frank only knew Emil slightly, I invited him to introduce the very first AE. Frank made a magnificently touching presentation, and Emil was thrilled. That was a fine and shining moment for SFWA.
Years later, when President Steven Gould consulted me about a 2014 Author Emeritus presentation and suggested Frank, I enthusiastically agreed. I only had one qualm, that I thought it was time to drop the title, Author Emeritus. In too many minds for too many reasons, it had come to be regarded as a sort of Junior Grand Master, something it was never intended to be. Steve and the Board of Directors settled on “Distinguished Guest.” Perfect. It feels a bit poignant, though, that Frank, who was integral when we launched the Author Emeritus program, also played his role as we phased it out.
I stayed at Frank’s home many times over the years and traveled with him on several occasions, usually to Nebula Awards events. In June, on the Sunday afternoon following the San Jose frolic, I saw him for the last time just a couple of weeks before his passing. His honor and acceptance speech were shamefully overlooked at the ceremony, so along with my partner Ron Davis and fellow writer Bob Angell, we resolved to take a train to San Francisco, along with the award, and make our own private presentation. We brought him his award, a couple of copies of the SFWA Bulletin special Nebulas edition, and two extra copies of Through My Glasses Darkly (2002), a collection of his short work that I had selected and edited with him. Those last hours were bittersweet, because I sensed that I would not see him again. While Ron, Bob, and Frank’s assistant Brian Kamps prepared dinner, Frank and I sat on a couch and talked. He held my hand the entire time, which was uncharacteristic, because Frank was never much for open displays of affection. He said himself that he was of that generation when it was hard to do so.
On August 8, 2014, a memorial service took place at the Women’s Building in the Market District. Over a hundred people turned out to say goodbye and to honor Frank’s memory. The following Saturday morning, August 9, a number of them boarded a yacht to sail around San Francisco Bay. It was Frank’s eighty-eighth birthday, and the group sang “Happy Birthday” as they scattered his ashes on the water.
ANDRE NORTON AWARD FOR YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WINNER
EXCERPT FROM SISTER MINE
NALO HOPKINSON
The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy is presented to the best young adult science fiction or fantasy book, in parallel with the annual Nebula Awards. Sister Mine was first published by Grand Central Publishing.
We’d had to be cut free of our mother’s womb. She’d never have been able to push the two-headed sport that was me and Abby out the usual way. Mom was still human at the time. My dad’s family hadn’t yet exiled her to the waters.
After the C-section, just for a few days, she was kind of sidelined while she recovered. That gave Dad’s family the opening they needed to move in and take over. ’Cause from their perspective, things were a mess. Abby and I were fused, you see. Conjoined twins. Abby’s head, torso and left arm protruded from my chest. We shared a liver, both kidneys, and three and three-quarters legs between us. We had two stomachs, two hearts and four lungs, and enough colon for us each to have a viable section, come to that. Abby and I could have lived as we were, conjoined. Between us, we had what we needed. But here’s the real kicker; Abby had the magic, I didn’t. Far as the Family was concerned, Abby was one of them, though cursed, as I was, with the tragic flaw of mortality. Abby and me, my mom brought us that gift.
You might say that my dad married outside the family. To hear some of them tell it, outside the species. Most of his family would barely give Mom the time of day while she was still around, despite the fact that she and her kin had done steward service to them for centuries. Or rather, because of it. Dad’s family could have stood it if she were just some dalliance of Dad’s, a bit of booty call. Even love might have been OK, if they’d kept it to a dull roar. Wouldn’t have been the first time that a celestial had knocked boots with the help. But no, Mom and Dad had to go and breed.
With Mom unable to interfere for the time being, Dad’s family decided that obviously, the human doctors of the hospital where we were born had to surgically separate Abby and me. They put pressure on my dad till he agreed to it. They’re not really venal, that lot, just too big for their britches. They’ve been emissaries of the Big Boss for so long that they forget they aren’t gods themselves, just glorified overseers. But overseers with serious power. Mom’s kin didn’t say boo. They knew damned well that they didn’t have the cash to buy that much trouble.
The second we were separated, Abby began to die. There was something vital she needed that my body’d been supplying. No one could tell exactly what, but we were losing her.
There’s a guardian that attends births and deaths. He keeps his eye on the young and on the old; the former having so recently left the other world for this one, and the latter soon to depart that way again. That guardian, you might say that he’s a border guard. It’s his job to send the living on their way, and the dead on theirs. If it’s not your time, you’re not going anywhere. He was there, ready to do his job, when Abby and I were born, the semi-celestial child and her human donkey of a sister. Now it was time for him to escort her back across the barrier between the quick and the dead. He lingered over our cribs in Intensive Care for an instant. He smiled at us both, chucked us under our tiny chins. He thought we were kinda cute. Then he kissed us each on the forehead and gently picked Abby up, cradled her in his arms. My dad, grieving, watched him. The guardian gave him a rueful look. Have I mentioned that the guardian is our uncle? Dad’s brother? He took Abby, leaving my dad to weep at my bedside.
The guardian should have carried Abby to the crossroads right away. Instead, he took her to my mom’s room. He’d taken a shine to Mom, Uncle had. A real shine. The kind that sets brother against brother, starts family feuds.
Mom was still dopey from the anaesthetic, but uncle took care of that. Plain ol’ unconsciousness was no challenge for the being who shuttled humans from life to death like beads on an abacus. Even in her half-sleep she’d been begging to see her babies, and now she was fully awake. This was her first time seeing Abby, but when she clapped eyes on my uncle carrying a gasping bundle whose little mouth pursed like my dad’s, she figured out pretty quickly that the baby was one of hers.
The guardian’s impartial. He has to be. Normally he wouldn’t be put in the position of herding family across the borders between life and death, since the rest of that lot don’t die. Not permanently, anyway.
Mom begged him for Abby’s life.
He replied, “There isn’t enough of her to survive on this side of the gate.”
Mom was having none of it. She began to make promises. But what does a human have to offer a demigod? She tried to swear her lifelong obedience. Uncle shook his head. In a way, he already had that, from every mortal on this plane and the next. But he didn’t leave with Abby. Mom’s arms ached to hold her baby. She promised sex, the best he’d had, and he’s had some
good stuff. He’s not just Lord of the Grave, my uncle. All that borning and dying business has given him a taste for some of the sweetest gifts of the flesh. My mom was fine, they tell me. All blackberry sweet juice. And she knew what to do with what she had. How d’you think she managed to catch the eye of not just one celestial, but two?
Thing is, Uncle, for all his lechery, is pretty professional about his job. He shook his head, turned towards the door. But Mom spied the tear twinkling in his eye, and she knew she’d underestimated him. Sure, he liked doing the nasty plenty well, but—“Save her,” Mom said wildly. “And I’ll love you.”
Uncle stopped, one hand on the door’s crash bar, the other supporting Abby’s one-and-three-quarters-legged little rump. He knows lies, Uncle does. There’s a propaganda machine that makes him out to be the prince of them, but that’s some bullshit. Those are the same people that won’t let their kids borrow fiction from the libraries. Stories aren’t lies, people. Some of them are truer than any autobiography. But Uncle does know how lies taste; refined sugar-sweet, not molasses-sweet like truth, with its sulfurous backbite. Mom was telling the truth; the room was treacly with it. If he saved her daughter, she would love him. She would love Death itself, fiercely and hotly. What parent wouldn’t, under the circumstances?
Uncle looked down at the child he was holding, at her piecemeal body and oddly canted face. Her jaundiced skin going blue. She had my mom’s eyes. We both do. Uncle turned. Mom reached her hand out, took his in it, her eyes brimming with hope, with love enough to fight for her child, and more.
Uncle whispered, “I can’t do it. She needs organs, tissues that I can’t give her. I’m a ferryman. I can’t make her live.”
“Allyou need me for that,” said my dad. He walked into Mom’s room. Uncle tried to snatch his hand away from Mom’s, but she held on and looked Dad full in the face. A mother’s love is fierce with pride, and Mom was never one for regrets.