Yesterday, Sir Terry Pratchett died, and I’ve been moved by posts remembering the man, his warmth, his personality.
I met him twice. Once, at a signing in
the 90s when I was working in a bookstore, long before I decided to
finally write the darn Space Opera I’d been dreaming of for years.
I’ve worked at a lot of signing sessions. Some authors were
demanding, some warm, some forgettable. Terry was one of the most
interested in his fans: personable, funny and warm.
The session went on a long time, as I
recall. People turned up with old books and new books, bookmarks and
memorabilia, and he made no difference between those who’d paid for
a hardback and those who’d bought a couple of bookmarks. He stamped
books with ‘Can’t cook, won’t ook’ (Nanny Ogg’s hideously
funny cookbook was one of the books on offer), posed for photos, and
became, for me, a Writing God in one day.
I felt close to the
community, a part of it, because I got his books: I’d read
them and laughed. In terms of me embracing the world of sff and being
proud, it was up there with Tom Baker offering me a Jelly baby (I
ate it, sadly. I should have kept and framed it…)
The second time I saw Sir Terry was at
the end of a talk at the World Fantasy Convention in 2013. I hadn’t
gone into the talk – standing room only – but waited
outside in the crowd. Terry was very frail, shockingly so after I’d
last seen him, but still great fun, swapping hats with the
audience, telling jokes. Everyone knew, of course, about his illness,
that his wouldn’t be a long sojourn with us, but there was nothing
sombre in the mood, just enjoyment at his great character.
I’ve started this blog post a few times,
planning to talk about the sff community, and its been a pretty
soul-less affair, shelved and mulled on. I wanted to talk about how
I’ve found my way into this odd little community, even though I
live far from any centre of SFF. I planned to talk about websites and
twitter and facebook groups, and all the reaching out on social media new authors are supposed to do. About how I have friends all
around the world because of our shared love of the fantastic.
That’s not what the blog’s about,
after all. It came to me that all my soundbites of advice, my mantras
about ignoring the snafflements and nastiness that can abound,
weren’t what I wanted to say. That this is going onto the person I
know as J-Wo’s blog (because in my first, and still central, SFF community, that’s who he is) is fitting.
We see in Sir Terry’s death – and Leonard Nimoy’s not long before – what the sff community is.
J-Wo's one of the first
people I got to know outside my close circle, who managed to be
welcoming and share extensive knowledge of cons and people, and
didn’t care if I was a newbie, only that I was interested.
That, mostly, is the response I’ve had across the community: that
rising above differences, that lack of awe and levelling of surfaces.
Despite living in the middle of nowhere
(or close to it), despite not having been published in long form
(three weeks, everyone say eeeee!), despite being a female writer of
very soft sf with an aversion to physics, I’ve been welcomed.
I’ve
been looked after at cons, promoted, had a published author agree to
do a blurb for me (and thank you, thank you, thank you if you’re
reading, the amazing Francis Knight….), been mentored and
supported, critiqued and edited, tweeted and retweeted. No one has
been anything less than supportive.
We see in Sir Terry’s death – and
Leonard Nimoy’s not long before – what the sff community is. I
follow Pat Cadigan’s blog and see so much warmth and encouragement
to her, it – a blog about cancer and hideous treatments and
circling danger – is one of the most uplifting things I read and
like.
If there are a few harder kernels in
the community, if there are voices trying to cause division, I think
that’s not the issue. The centre of our community is warmth, friendship, the (whisper it) slightly geeky conversations about
worlds and authors and the occasional obsessive love of ray guns and
the like. The acceptance of people brought together by a
shared love of the fantastic.
Anyway, usually at this point I pop my
blogs away and edit in a day or two but I think I’ll just send this
one, in the knowledge that editing out thoughts that the loss of
someone like Sir Terry brings might edit out something of the impact
of that person.
Suffice to say, he was one of the first
people in SFF to move me enough to feel I wanted to hang around and
write the darn book and get closer, and we’ve lost one of our
brightest, warmest, funniest stars. Let us keep the inclusivity he
showed to his fans from every walk of life, and enjoy our place in
the community, however we get to it, from whichever corner we
inhabit.
Jo Zebedee writes. Quite a lot. She’s
also slightly obsessed with sexy space pilots and characters with
dark little edges. She blames Han Solo and Kerr Avon for this.
Her debut novel, Abendau’s Heir, the
first book of the Inheritance Trilogy, is out on 31st
March 2015, from Tickety Boo Press.
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