World Con Belated: Day 5

In the course of prepping for one of my "panels of death" (Plotting Time Travel with Connie Willis and S.M. Stirling) I determined to use Larry Niven's famous treatise on the subject, The Theory and Practice of Time Travel (http://english202multiverse.pbwiki.com/Notes-on-The-Theory-and-Practice-of-Time-Travel). Or more specifically an abridged version of it. I felt that if I were to represent Mr. Niven's work at such an event-especially one that I planned on editing myself, I'd need his permission. I sent him an email introducing myself (naming both my publishing house and my editor as the modern day version of a letter of introduction) and then not only asked for his permission to edit the article but also asked for a soft copy of it (At that point none were available online and what was available in ebook format was uneditable). His first response was heartwarming, and I quote, "Sure you can reference 'The Theory and Practice of Time Travel', and even quote from it." His second response was, to say the least, quite surprising. "I don't have a digital copy, so can't send it to you. That's a very old article. I don't believe a quill pen was involved, but maybe." How, I wondered, could arguably one of the greatest hard science fiction writers of our generation not have within his possession a digitized version of his own work? Oversight on the part of the many houses who've carried his work? Disinterest by the author himself in having it? All of the above? Though I'm entering into what my kids refer to as the "that's 'cause you're old, Dad" phase of life I was still raised (albeit during my college years) with a digital quill (otherwise referred to as a computer). The truth is the large amount of stashed and unused chunks of our book, The Unincorporated Man, will in all likelihood remain that way. There's a certain piece of mind knowing they're there but a good story has a cruel edit and thank god (and our editor) for that. So I suppose Mr. Niven not having myriad stashed and digitized versions of his books and stories makes sense. That's not the way they did things back in the day, and since that "day" is what so many of us Science Fiction writers aspire to--great stories told by the greatest storytellers, then perhaps I should have left well enough alone.

I didn't.

I was determined to find Mr. Niven's work in digitized form and figured somewhere in the vastness of the net someone had bothered to transcribe it. One week of drilling later I found it, burned it onto a CD (scary to think that pretty much all his collected works fit on it) and determined to hand it to him at an opportune moment during the Con. Fate conspired against me for the first 4 days. I'd either forget the CD and see Mr. Niven or have the CD with no sign of him whatsoever. Then, day 5 arrived and I was literally walking out the door to leave for the journey home when I spotted him across the way in the main lobby of the convention center. I pulled the CD from my folder, dashed across the lobby and (huffing and puffing) quickly re-introduced myself (he'd only known me from emails). I then handed him the CD of his work, reminding him of his previous missive to me. His and his wife's face lit up as they both realized what he was holding in his hands.

I don't know if he'll ever use it, nor am I sure he really needed it, but I'm sure as hell glad I did it. And that, friends, is the real magic of Worldcon. Anything can happen. And in mine and Eytan's case so much did. Delivering Mr. Niven's digitally quilled CD was only the icing on the cake. It was a fitting end to an auspicious event. And one I'll remember forever.

Thanks so much for sharing the Worldcon journey with me. I'll now proceed to return to our regularly scheduled program.

Dani