The 2019 Skylark Memorial Award
I was honored to received the Skylark Memorial Award from NESFA.
Here is the text of my acceptance speech:
I want to thank NESFA and the fans for this incredible honor. I’m enormously grateful, but truthfully I feel that I share it with all of you because finding this community has immeasurably improved my life.
My love of science fiction is embedded in one of my earliest memories of my father reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He left out all the boring fish stuff and focused on the adventure and the exploration of an alien world. Then when I was seven year old I read A Princess of Mars and I was lost to wonder.
Our local library had a very tall, very narrow shelf that house all the science fiction books. It was in the adult section so my mother (with an eye roll) acceded to my demands and checked out the books for me. I began with A and read all the way to Z.
I was always the dreamy, nerdy kid who got good grades and never figured out how to be popular. During those early miserable teenage years I dreamed of being transported to Barsoom to fight alongside Tan Hadron of Hastor. (I always liked him better than John Carter even though Tan was rather clueless.)
Life went on with me reading met science fiction and trying answer the inevitable and always rude question of why I liked all that ray guns and spaceship crap. Then my late friend Victor Milan told me about science fiction conventions. I attended my first convention and realized I had found my family. Nobody there was asking me why I read this crap. They shared my love of the field, wanted to talk about books and Star Trek and Star Wars.
I began writing in secret with Vic mentoring me — I have been fortunate in my mentors, it was George who helped me get my start in Hollywood. But it all began with fandom. Realizing I was not alone. That other people dreamed of the stars, wanted to help Frodo get the One Ring to Mount Doom, cried when the Mother Thing froze to death on Pluto (which will always be a planet, damn it!).
So to all my brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents — thank you for welcoming me into your world and letting me weave some stories as a small repayment for all you have given to me.
Skylark Memorial Award 2019