It takes the shiny off everything. Everything. Including the pure shameless pride of being declared a Damon Knight Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. All of it.
I’m a good writer. I know that perfectly well, after some sixty years of doing whatever it is I do, and then doing it over. But I’m not shuffling my feet, looking down and mumbling shyly when I say that on my best day, with the wind at my back and the fish biting, I couldn’t have carried Ursula K. LeGuin’s spare gym socks. I know that equally well. Sharing a great honor with her won’t ever change that.
I didn’t know her well. She lived in Portland, and I’ve been all over northern California in the last half-century, with six years out for the Seattle area. We hadn’t yet met when I followed her by a week into the Clarion West workshop (1972, was it?), to be greeted by a note saying, “Welcome, Unicorn! Make the little kobolds work their tails off!) Mostly we ran into each other at various conventions, grabbing coffee where we could. I do like to recall a serious conversation, initiated by me in increasing alarm at having become known more and more, in the intervening years, as the Unicorn Guy. Meanwhile, Ursula’s recently-published Earthsea novels had, as far as I was concerned, put paid to dragons as literary figures: I felt – and still feel – that dragons should be off-limits to all other writers, no matter how gifted or inventive they might be. But I was younger then, and had the chutzpah to offer to trade my unicorns even-up for her dragons. “Unicorns are really easy to housebreak. They always ask to go outside.” I remember that I was even willing to throw in a utility infielder, if she insisted.
Ursula’s response: “Do you know how impossible it is to keep dragons off the curtains? And they’re absolute hell on carpets!” We never did make the deal, but not for my lack of trying. As I say, I was younger then.
I’ve often told the story of appearing onstage with Ursula and Vonda McIntyre in 1975, at Oregon State University in Corvallis, the three of us speaking about being considered genre writers, inhabitants of a certain ghetto: our work generally tolerated – even loved, in certain corners of the ghetto – but almost invariably unrespected as real, proper, literary fiction. Some of the male students in the back of the auditorium began to complain loudly that they’d come to hear talk about good old rocket-jockey science fiction, and not this “shrill feminism!” Ursula, sitting on my left, turned to Vonda on my right, saying severely, “Vonda, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you about being shrill!” Vonda responded calmly, – without missing a beat, “No, Ursula dear – I’m strident. You’re shrill.”
Me? I sat between them, absolutely vain of actually knowing those two women, and trying very hard not to giggle. I can’t honestly remember whether I managed it or not.
In fact, she was never shrill. Fierce, yes. Intense, yes, with a great many things that she wanted to say, since no one else was saying them. Deadpan funny, always, even at her most passionate. Pissed-off, certainly, of course, as she bloody well should have been – as she bloody well needed to be. She meant business, Ursula did, and never a doubt of it. But kind, always, with the angry compassion of her Space Crone. Forever fiercely, stubbornly kind.
In my introduction to the 2017 Tachyon anthology New Voices of Fantasy, I wrote:
“Years ago, knowing that I was scheduled to speak at the annual meeting of [SFWA]…Ursula LeGuin, wisest of us all, warned me as follows: ‘Remember that most of your audience will be drunk by the time you get up to speak, and remember always that all of us feel, to one degree or another, that mainstream fiction has been stealing our ideas – and even our classic cliches – for generations, and selling them back to us as Magic Realism. Tell them that, loudly and repeatedly, and the ones who can still stand up will be buying you drinks all night. And never forget that this is a small, highly incestuous group, and a lot of people have been married to, or sleeping. with other members of the group – so watch what you say.'”
There’s nothing I can say about her now that isn’t all over the Internet today, and won’t be providing endless exhausting doctorates, seminars, fellowships and festivals tomorrow, and in the years to come. She was the master. She still is. She lived as full and honorable a life as anyone could have, and she got her work done. But I don’t believe for a minute that she ever thought she’d gotten her work done. The truly great ones never do. There’s always more.
Photo is used under a Creative Commons license from Wikipedia.
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Fans Against Fraud ends legal battle with Conlan Press
Statement by Patrick Lake
Hello, for an introduction, I’m not known by many people in this story and have said little directly about myself so far. That’s how false impressions have been spread, but the simple truth is I was pulled in like many who found themselves cheated. My background is in animation, with art credits in TV and movies. Independently I started a business as a book dealer, which lets me provide support for others. Making a donation in response to a call for help for creators rights led to certain business dealing with Connor Cochran, but little did I know the lengths that people will go to cheat others. Nobody knows the costs I paid to prevail in a situation of breathtaking abuse, but my personal stake was always about stopping it and not going quiet because of retaliation. At this point I think we all know who the good guys and bad guys are, and there never should have been false impressions about that. Now here are a few words about legal matters:
Peter S. Beagle, creator of The Last Unicorn, has been in legal battle with his ex-manager Connor Cochran since late 2015. And in 2014, as a result of efforts by Fansagainstfraud.com to publicize certain business practices of Cochran and his Conlan Press, Cochran entered a public relations and legal battle with one of the persons who was critical of him in the past. That is me, and I sued Cochran with a cross-claim. I was supported by Peter Beagle and witnesses who responded to a public call for help. For more details on that, go here.
On February 17, 2019, after years of threats and running through five different lawyers, and after repeatedly asking the court to continue the trial date since May 2017 — even though he publicly claimed to want to get me into a courtroom — Connor Cochran agreed to dismiss his claims after the court wouldn’t give him one more continuance. Cochran agreed to dismiss his claims against me, in exchange for dismissal of my claim based upon Cochran’s unfounded public statements that I had forged, or “caused to be forged,” his signature and that of his assistant, decade-long suspended attorney Charles Petit, on a contract between myself and Cochran.
Cochran only claimed his signature had been forged once I hired an attorney — several months after I had already sent Cochran a copy of the allegedly forged document with a request for payment due, to which Cochran had replied by promising payment. Until Cochran dismissed his claims against me, a handwriting expert with over 30 years’ experience (including with the U. S. Treasury Department and the California Dept. of Justice) was scheduled to testify in court that it was a virtual certainty that the signatures were authentic, not forgeries.
I took a default judgement against Conlan Press on the date of trial, February 19, 2019, with a $32,000 claim open to future pursuit. Conlan Press is in bankruptcy. The end of the legal battle allows both sides to return to their lives. My side has never been fully told until this statement, and I’m not interested in adding further public comments. My gratitude goes to those who supported me and continue to support Peter Beagle.