The Drink Tank 219 (2009).pdf

The Drink Tank 219

Why yes, that’s a Ditmar cover! I

love it, and Evelyn had one of her all-time

great quotes about it: it’s ladybugs on a

Morrissey strip! I nearly burst a blood

vessel after she said that. Also, I should

change the CD in my car...

This issue is dedicated to the staff of

Trepidation, the 2009 Bittercon. It’s being

held at the Hyatt Regency in San Francis-

co on Friday, the 31st of July, 2009. Jason

Schachat, Drink Tank contributor/ﬁlmmak-

er/FAAn Award vote getter, will be the Fan

GoH and the Writer GoH is known as Tobe

Announced. You can read more about it at

www.trepidation2009.com.

Did I also mention that they put all

this together in less than a week, that is to

say that they started on Friday and the con

is the following Friday? It’s amazing. Look

at their website: it’s fantastic! It’s better

than most con websites where they have

things like budgets and people and time!

It goes to show that you can always put

together awesomeness by simply having bi-

zarre people do bizarre stuff! It’s all a part

of the grand tapestry.

I’ve had a lot of changes in my

WorldCon schedule, with the two biggest

being dropped from what I count as three

panels (the Young People’s panel with

Warren Buff, the Computer History panel

and the one with Flick) and had the Tech-

nobabble Quiz turned over to Monday at

12:30. It’s a better sched, though.

This issue has a tribute from Taral

Wayne, a piece from Lee Lavell, Mo Star-

key and Ditmar art and LoCs!

Phyllis Gotlieb, 1926 – 2009

Taral Wayne

born in the Canadian west, but had moved to

the United States,. and was better known as

an “American” writer. Writers like Spider

Robinson and Guy Gavriel Kay had not yet

moved to Canada. Donald Kingsbury, Tanya

Huff, Elizabeth Vonarburg, Charles de Lint,

Nalo Hopkinson, Robert J. Sawyer and Rob-

ert Charles Wilson all lay in the future.

But for more than twenty years, Phyl-

lis Gotlieb and Canadian SF were all but syn-

onymous. As a younger woman, she had been

ﬁrst among Canadian poets. Then in 1964

she wrote her ﬁrst science ﬁction novel, Sun-

burst. It became a classic among those who

knew their genre, and it stood alongside a

body of magazine stories written to the same

high standard. We were ﬂattered to have her

attend our piddling little writers’ workshop.

Unfortunately, we frittered away the

privilege. We had a few more workshop meet-

ings, but it was plain that almost no-one was

working between them. What little was being

brought for reading was wretched. One of

our group clearly had issues to resolve, and

never failed to have a few pages of disturb-

ingly violent and angry prose to share. The

only other participant who took the work-

shop seriously wrote at a grade three level.

The rest of us had discovered fanzines, and

were distracted by writing for egoboo, rather

than for the remote possibility of professional

publication someday. We discretely stopped

asking Phyllis to attend, and the workshops

no longer appeared in the club schedule.

That might have been the end of our

acquaintance, but I stayed in touch with

Phyllis for reasons that are no longer clear.

I only heard it yesterday. A very old

friend had died. She was 83, so it was no sur-

prise in the cosmic sense, and yet, as usual it

was completely unexpected.

I met Phyllis Gotlieb sometime in the

mid ‘70s. The local SF club had started a

writers’ workshop, and we invited Phyllis to

supervise the ﬁrst meeting.

She was a natural choice. Until that

time, Phyllis was virtually the only living

author of science ﬁction in Canada. There

had been a few old pulp writers, mostly bur-

ied and forgotten. A.E. Van Vogt had been

It might have been because I was OSFiC

secretary, and it was up to me to keep in

touch ofﬁcially. It got to be a pleasant

duty that I continued even when I gave up

responsibility for the club newsletters.

During the years after the work-

shop, Phyllis seemed to overcome some

internal inertia. Her ﬁrst new full

length work since the 60s was “O, Master

Caliban,” published in 1976. She wrote

“Heart of Red Iron,” as a sequel in 1989.

In 1998 Phyllis began a new series with

“Flesh and Gold,” ﬁnishing it with “Vio-

lent Stars” the year after. “Mindworlds”

followed in 2002, and her last novel,

Charles) Wilson. He thought I knew.

Sadly no, but who would have thought to

inform me? Bob had read that the cause

of death was complications due to a rup-

tured appendix. It’s all the more tragic

because it sounds so routine. Surely mod-

ern medicine can mop up some infected

leakage? But it doesn’t take very much to

stop the clock on a life that’s in its 80’s.

The last time I saw Phyllis was

at her 80th. birthday party. I brought a

friend and introduced him. We spoke a

little to the family, her husband Calvin

(who I knew slightly), and helped myself

to the buffet. Phyllis sat in the middle

“Birthstones,” was published in 2007. And

that was all, unfortunately. Even though she

had reduced the wait between her novels sig-

niﬁcantly, Phyllis was always a perfectionist

as a writer, and perfection is a slow process.

There were two collections of Phyl-

lis’s short stories that helped make up for the

long waits between novels. “Son of the Morn-

ing and Other Stories” (1983) was a mass

market paperback original, and brought

most of her best short work to readers for the

ﬁrst time since their magazine publications.

In 1995, Tesseract Books brought a number

of other short stories to a smaller audience.

“Blue Apes” appeared in both a paperback

and hard bound edition.

By the time Phyllis wrote her third

novel, she was no longer the only SF writer

in the country. Nor perhaps the most

prominent. New names appeared regularly

through the 80’s and 90’s, more than one of

the newcomers rising to real prominence by

any measure. But Phyllis was recognized by

one and all as the Godmother of SF in Cana-

da. She was repeatedly honored in that role.

Her skill was a inspiration to all, and her

efforts to help ﬂedgling writers were appreci-

ated universally.

Of course, I was not one of her more

likely bets. Phyllis never lost faith in me, de-

spite years in which I messed around in fan-

dom and was un-able to make a real foothold

as a professional illustrator. She encouraged

me, gave aid when needed, and was a good

friend regardless of unpromising returns on

her investment.

Phyllis passed away about a week

before I heard the news from Bob (Robert

of the community room, and spoke with

everyone as they passed by. But after what

seemed only a short time, she was fatigued

and went upstairs to rest. My friend and I

stayed a while longer, and left also. It’s hard

to believe it was three years ago and not just

last year.

After the party, we continued to talk

on the phone from time to time. Sometimes

I’d e-mail her this or that article I’d written,

for her comments. For weeks, now, I’d been

thinking I should make another call. I had

been putting it off, and putting it off, since

Phyllis could only talk on the phone for a few

minutes, before tiring. Now, as you always

do, I kick myself for not making the effort.

The irony, the sickeningly unfunny

twist in the tale, is that this year I might

ﬁnally have rewarded Phyllis’s faith in me.

Although I’ve been several times on the bal-

lot for best fanartist, the Hugo has remained

elusive. This year, at Anticipation, I’m

(A good collection of Phyllis’ work

ought to include a copy of “Works,” her 1978

one-volume collection of poetry as well. And

perhaps “Tesseracts 2,” the one anthology

she co-edited.)

No Man is an Island but I May

Very Well Be a Peninsula

by Lee Anne Lavell

I will need to make some explanations

before I get into the body of this. First of all,

I am writing this in mid July, 2009. Sec-

ondly, it is important to understand exactly

where I live.

I reside in Indianapolis which is in

Marion County, Indiana. My house is lo-

cated on the far east side, 1⁄4 of a mile from

the Marion – Hancock line, which is marked

by Carroll Road. The street upon which I

live, Muessing Rd, runs north-south, with the

south border being Prospect Street and the

north being Washington Street (also known

as US40 or the old National Road.). To the

south, Muessing jogs a bit to the east then

continues on to the South to road 52. To

the north Muessing enters the small town of

Cumberland, continues across Washington

St. for about ten blocks, then becomes Cum-

berland Road.

From Washington St. there are two

entrances to go south on Muessing. One

block west of the Muessing stoplight is Mun-

sie Street, which is a one way south for about

a block and will lead directly into Muess-

ing from there. The Muessing stoplight is

another matter. If one turns south there

you go one block and then you face an ar-

row pointing left. Muessing is to the right.

I have no idea why the arrow is there but it

confuses the hell out of people who want to

get to Muessing and really need to turn right

for one block. There is one thing more thing

that one needs to know about my stretch of

rather hopeful that things will go differently.

Being the fan Guest of Honour is an advan-

tage I’m not reluctant to ﬂaunt, and there’s

encouraging buzz in fandom that this is “my”

year. I may ﬁnally come home with one of

the silver rockets. Phyllis would have been

proud of me. Unfortunately... if the outcome

is all I could hope for, it still comes too late to

phone her with the happy news.

I’ll feel as though I’d let Phyllis down

despite everything.

Still, she didn’t doubt me for one min-

ute before, so perhaps the Hugo would only

be an anticlimax anyway.

Thank you, Phyllis, thank you.

Muessing. Since much of it borders a creek

heavy rains will ﬂood out certain areas (al-

though not near my house which is up on a

hill).

Washington Street is fairly commer-

cial in area with shopping centers, restau-

rants, supermarkets and all the rest. Pros-

pect is residential with a couple of schools

and a park.

Going west on Prospect from Muess-

ing, the next street, German Church, is

about 3⁄4 of a mile away. Another mile west

is Mitthoffer Road, and the next mile west

is Post Road. Those streets all run north to

Washington St. and then continue on north

for some distance.

Therefore my usual access to civiliza-

tion are these north-south roads, either going

straight north on Muessing or going west on

Prospect to one of these other roads.

Now down to the body of this thing

after the above long and turgid explanation.

Last year road improvements began along

Washington St., but these did not affect me

strongly as they were mostly beyond Mit-

thoffer and did not greatly impact my driv-

ing. This year that has changed. A lot of the

construction has now moved further east to

the Hancock County line and Carroll Rd.

In early Spring the work was mostly on the

north side of the street and so, outside of

making me dodge around barriers and face

slowed down trafﬁc because of lane closures

it didn’t bother me much (although did it

cause one accident where a worker managed

to get his head in the way of a bulldozer).

In June, though, things started to get

nasty. Suddenly Mitthoffer was closed on the

south side while they reconstructed the com-

plete intersection. My bank is on the corner

of Cherry Tree Shopping Center, right at the

intersection. OK. I could cope with that. Just

drive a bit further and enter the shopping center

further west and come around to the entrance of

my bank that way. All this was to be ﬁnished by

July 7. Not too bad. Just have to remember I

can’t get to Washington St. via Mitthoffer. I can

always take German Church or Post Road.

However, at the beginning of July a sign

went up on Prospect saying it would be closed

beyond German Church for no stated number of

miles from July 7 for a month. Just great. Now

I can go north on Mitthoffer except I can’t get to

Mitthoffer, or to Post Road for that matter, via

Prospect. I could go north on German Church

and Muessing so I still had a couple of ways out.

Sure. That would be too easy. They

have started work on the south side of Washing-

ton Street. Suddenly everything is a mess there.

The intersections to Muessing and Munsie are all

torn up. Sometimes you can get through and at

other times barricades are up. Carroll, on the

county line, also has the same problem. There

are also a couple of small side streets into Cum-

berland that are messed up. It is an adventure,

sometimes futile to go north that way.

on there too and it was blocked. Had to

go west to Mitthoffer and go north that

way. That bit of work seems to over with,

I believe. However, if things continue this

way, pretty soon I am going to have to go

all the way south to road 52 in order to ﬁnd a

way north—that is, there isn’t construction

Ah, but at least I still have German Church as

an escape route...until they start tearing that

up. A few days ago I was planning to go north

on German Church beyond Washington, but

when I got there I found there was work going

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