![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
authors and awards
Mar. 4th, 2010 08:42 amSo Scalzi wants to encourage voting for SFWA officers, which doesn't much personally concern me because I'm not a SFWAn, but a couple other of his recent posts do spawn thoughts.
1. The farthest I've ever gone specifically to see an author was probably the time I went some forty miles from Nashville to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to see Andre Norton, who most kindly gave time and personal attention. Actually I was professionally interested in seeing her library, which she'd set up as a by-appointment research- and work-space for fantasy writers, and she was happy to show it off. This was in connection with the Nashville Mythcon. Norton was not well enough to attend, but a sort of quasi-invitation had been given to convention members who wanted to come by. I expressed interest, so off we went.
2. Scalzi also writes about the experience of physically having an Oscar. This is a reprint, a bit ironic now since he really has - earned and not just physically holding - a Hugo, an award that impresses me as much as an Oscar. Of course, unlike Scalzi I don't know anyone who's actually won an Oscar, and have never seen the award in person, whereas I know quite a few people who've won Hugos and have seen many of the awards close up in person, both on visits and on the two occasions I sat on stage helping with giving them out, having been responsible for figuring out who got them.
As for having a Hugo, I had twenty of them. They lived in a crate in my garage for six months before the San Francisco Worldcon, except for the one I propped up on my mantelpiece to see what it felt like to have a Hugo. It had to be propped up because it was just the rocket, no base. I'd picked up the crate, sent by Peter Weston's Hugo-manufacturing company in England, from the shipping firm at the airport, lugged it home in my car - it was heavy - bought a special pair of scissors for snipping metal tape (the only souvenir of the occasion I still have) to get it open, and then lugged it up to the convention center and down into the hall - did I mention it was damned heavy? - on the day. Phew.
I do have a Mythopoeic Scholarship Award of my own on a living room shelf today, possibly the only one ever given for writing an Appendix.
1. The farthest I've ever gone specifically to see an author was probably the time I went some forty miles from Nashville to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to see Andre Norton, who most kindly gave time and personal attention. Actually I was professionally interested in seeing her library, which she'd set up as a by-appointment research- and work-space for fantasy writers, and she was happy to show it off. This was in connection with the Nashville Mythcon. Norton was not well enough to attend, but a sort of quasi-invitation had been given to convention members who wanted to come by. I expressed interest, so off we went.
2. Scalzi also writes about the experience of physically having an Oscar. This is a reprint, a bit ironic now since he really has - earned and not just physically holding - a Hugo, an award that impresses me as much as an Oscar. Of course, unlike Scalzi I don't know anyone who's actually won an Oscar, and have never seen the award in person, whereas I know quite a few people who've won Hugos and have seen many of the awards close up in person, both on visits and on the two occasions I sat on stage helping with giving them out, having been responsible for figuring out who got them.
As for having a Hugo, I had twenty of them. They lived in a crate in my garage for six months before the San Francisco Worldcon, except for the one I propped up on my mantelpiece to see what it felt like to have a Hugo. It had to be propped up because it was just the rocket, no base. I'd picked up the crate, sent by Peter Weston's Hugo-manufacturing company in England, from the shipping firm at the airport, lugged it home in my car - it was heavy - bought a special pair of scissors for snipping metal tape (the only souvenir of the occasion I still have) to get it open, and then lugged it up to the convention center and down into the hall - did I mention it was damned heavy? - on the day. Phew.
I do have a Mythopoeic Scholarship Award of my own on a living room shelf today, possibly the only one ever given for writing an Appendix.
