Rudder is gone for another month and my life has shifted into neutral again. Quiet mode, anyway. Except that I have Worldcon to look forward to this weekend. I'll miss the first couple of days. I'm taking Friday off so I can get there midway through the day instead of late at night, and then will need to leave early enough on Sunday so I'm not driving when my body wants to be sleeping. (Six hour solo drive through the desert, best not to be too dozy.) I will have the iPod and the satellite radio so I'm spoiled for entertainment.
The very good news is that, in addition to a couple of people from online I'm looking forward to meeting and the authors I want to fangirl at (from a respectful distance) (in some cases the two categories merge), there will be at least one and probably two people I already know there. One is an old friend of my brother's from his writing list whom I may have met more times in the flesh and certainly in more places than he has, and the other is an old and treasured friend from college - knowing that he's an active con-goer I finally thought to look him up on the membership list, and he's listed. I've sent him an email to make sure.
The other place where I'm delightedly meeting up with old friends and acquaintances, though in a less corporeal milieu, is in Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes. They are writers and book collecters, in most cases both, and of course all are Sherlockians. Christopher Morley is all over the place, and Dorothy L. Sayers pops in for frequent appearances. Madeleine Stern, the book collector, has apparently speculated extensively on Holmes' passion for collecting, and one of Doyle's early manuscripts was donated to the UT library by Frederic Dannay. Manly Wade Wellman and Anthony Boucher are also well represented. Poul Anderson. Jacques Barzun. Fletcher Pratt. About the only Sherlockian I haven't seen in evidence yet is Isaac Asimov; possibly his Baker Street Irregular days postdate Baring-Gould. (I'm actually a bit surprised at how recent the book is (1960) considering Baring Gould himself made an appearance in one of Laurie R. King;'s Homes/Russell stories inthe 1920s.)
Posted by dichroic at August 21, 2006 01:13 PM