My first book, The Chinese Mirror, was a fantasy novel for young adults – which took me for a while onto the fringes of the SF writing community. In July 1989, I took part in my first ‘con’.

This conference on speculative fiction has started. When I was asked to take part I said yes, of course, happy to – and then thought ‘Ohmigawd, I’ve hardly read any new science fiction or fantasy for years!”

I re-read old favourites and I love to find new authors that I enjoy. But it’s so hard to find the good stuff. Everything has the same lurid cover, not to mention the same blurb on the back … “Will [XYZ] be able to slay [ZYX] and prevent [YXZ] from destroying [O]?”

(It is slightly dispiriting to realize you could put the same blurb on the back of my book)

Anyway, I went to the library and hauled away a pile of books, and have been studying as if they were going to set me an exam. Discuss Sprague de Camp’s use of the hero myth and compare with early Rice Burroughs. Name the evil dictator in Brunner’s novel, “Squares of the City. How is he similar to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”?

What if I flunk?

This seems like a distinct possibility. After all, I was assured that this would be a ‘writer’s con’ – that it would be very different from the usual SF cons focused on fandom. It would be serious, not Star Trek.

I walked in the door of Lister Hall behind a young woman dressed in a vaguely medieval costume, who looked like a cross between Maid Marian and Queen Arwen Evenstar, and went up in the elevator with her and someone in a large furry suit. This is serious? 

There also seem to be a large number of young men who look as though they need more fresh air and exercise. Though they are certainly ‘serious’ about writing. I overheard one of them buttonholing William Gibson.

“Has it occurred to you that Neuromancer is the dark side of Sons and Lovers?” he asked intensely.

Gibson gave a snort and said, “Well, now it all falls into place.”

My co-panelists included Phyllis Gottlieb and Judith Merrill. Phyllis’s voice is a Bronx honk and Judith’s voice is a husky snarl. They are both women of strong views. I sat meekly between them during the panel discussion while they disagreed with each other, and I disagreed (silently but just as intensely) with both of them. No one seemed inclined to ask me about the hero myth in L. Sprague de Camp.

Judith in particular seems like a writer of another vintage. “Candas, you don’t seriously propose to discuss writing in a room with no coffee and no alcohol,” she roared during this afternoon’s for-writers-only session.

Writers I know today seem like watered-down versions of the old booze-and-body-abuse stereotypes. We’ve all become sober and interested in fitness, and half of us seem to be women waking up to their creative potential rather late in life. Hemmingway and Dylan Thomas seem like old-fashioned models for the writer’s life.

Every hero myth gets modulated through the years…

From journal entries, July 1989