not the Nebulas controvery

[calimac]

By now, most readers from the SF community will have heard about the Great Blooper at last weekend's Nebulas, where somehow the schedule omitted a special honor that had been intended for Frank M. Robinson. Frank was too ill to be there, but the omission certainly cheesed off the intended acceptor, who had made a special effort to attend.

Something like that happened to me once. This was when I was Mythopoeic Awards administrator, and Mythcon was subsumed into the big tent of the Tolkien Centenary Conference in Oxford. The awards were announced at a subsidiary event early in the conference, but I found I was able to get John M. Ford, a name of some significance, who was in England at the time, to come to the main banquet to accept the children's award for Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories - as I recall, they shared a UK publisher.

The organizers agreed to make a little space for this on the banquet program, but I guess they forgot and it didn't happen. I should have double-checked, but I hadn't yet been burned often enough by experience to know that this needs to be done. I sat there at a table with Mike Ford, feeling more and more embarrassed as the program went on and I wasn't called on, and at the end, as everyone was getting up and leaving, I apologized to him, shook his hand, and gave him the statuette, which he slipped into his backpack before heading back to London. And that was the last I ever heard of the incident.

But that's not what I'm writing about. What I'm wondering is: did the Nebula Weekend in San Jose have a restaurant guide? You see, members of the committee had seen my Potlatch restaurant guide and asked if they could use it. I had said sure, provided that I was given the chance to update it - as restaurants can come and go like mayflies, and this was 3 months later - for which I'd need to know their deadline. But they never got back to me, and in the press of other duties I let it pass.

So now I wonder what was the result. I couldn't find any trace of a local guide at all on the website. Did they have one? Did they refer people to the online edition of my Potlatch guide, and, if so, did they give the warning that it was out of date? I don't want to ask them now; I'm sure they're very busy with their cleanup, and I don't want to nag them with a now-moot question; but I am curious.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Not having gone to the Nebs myself, I can't address the question of whether they used your guide, but I do know that at the Vanguard earlier this month, we talked about your excellent guide. John Berry and Eileen Gunn said they'd certainly make use of it, as they were going not just to the Nebulas but to another conference in San Jose a few days before. There was general agreement that you write the best fannish restaurant guides around.

So here: have your egoboo! You've certainly earned it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Thank you, but I am just an ant at the feet of the late George Alec Effinger, whose restaurant guide for the New Orleans Worldcon in 1988 was the most fabulous ever done. I planned my entire visit around that guide, and I was deeply satisfied.

What I'm mostly concerned about regarding my guide is grumbles over out of dateness. I just found last weekend, for instance, that a new restaurant had opened in place of one of the clubs on South First.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

"Nebula Awards Weekend Restaurant Guide
Courtesy of David Bratman

Disclaimer: this list was first compiled last September/October. It was updated for Potlatch in February, but we did not have resources to update it again before publication. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

Etc. I don't suppose you want a copy? We have two...

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

So they did put in a disclaimer and just didn't tell me? I suppose that was the best thing, since I probably wouldn't have had the time to update it properly. As long as the disclaimer was prominently put, then.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Did it have the complete text from the Potlatch web site? (Sections 19-22 were omitted from the Potlatch program book due to lack of space.)

[desperance.livejournal.com]

It's the first thing you come to, yup. In italics and everything.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

(This was printed and stapled sheets, in the welcome package.)