ROOTS AND A FEW VINES
by Mike Resnick
So I'm sitting there in Winnipeg, resplendent in my tuxedo,
and morbidly wondering how many fans have called me "Mr. Resnick"
instead of "Mike" since the worldcon began three days ago.
I don't _feel_ like a Mister. I feel like a fan who is
cheating by sitting here with all the pros, waiting for Bob
Silverberg to announce the winner of the Best Editor Hugo. He goes
through the names: Datlow, Dozois, Resnick, Rusch, Schmidt.
He opens the envelope and reads off Kris Rusch's name, and
suddenly I am walking up to the stage. Bob is sure I thought he
called out _my_ name, and looks like he is considering clutching
the Hugo to his breast and running off with it (although that is
actually a response common to all pros when they are in proximity
to a Hugo), but finally he sighs and hands it over to me, and I
start thanking Ed Ferman and all the voters.
What am I doing here, I wonder, picking up a Hugo for a lady
who is half my age and has twice my talent and is drop-dead
gorgeous to boot? How in blazes did I ever get to be an Elder
Statesman?
* * *
Well, it began in 1962, which, oddly enough, was _not_ just
last year, no matter how it feels. Carol and I had met at the
University of Chicago in 1960. We'd gone to the theater on our
first date, and wound up in the Morrison Hotel's coffee shop,
where we talked science fiction until they threw us out at 5 in
the morning. It was the first time either of us realized that
someone else out there read that crazy Buck Rogers stuff (though
we might have guessed, since they continued to print it month
after month, and two sales per title would hardly seem enough to
keep the publishers in business.)
Well, 1962 rolls around, and so does a future Campbell winner
named Laura...but the second biggest event of the year comes when
Ace Books, under the editorship of Don Wollheim, starts pirating a
bunch of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, and a whole generation gets
to learn about Tarzan and Frank Frazetta and John Carter and Roy
Krenkal and David Innes all at once.
But the important thing, the thing that unquestionably shaped
my adult life, was that one of the books had a little blurb on the
inside front cover extolling ERB's virtues, and it was signed
"Camille Cazedessus, Editor of _ERB-dom_". Well, you didn't have
to be a genius to figure out that _ERB-dom_, at least in that
context, was an obvious reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs.
A whole magazine devoted to one of my favorite writers? I
could barely wait until the next morning, when I took the subway
downtown and entered the Post Office News, Chicago's largest
magazine store. I looked for _ERB-dom_ next to _Time, Life, Look,
Newsweek,_ and _Playboy._ Wasn't there. I looked for it next to
_Analog, Galaxy,_ and _F&SF._ No dice. Wasn't anywhere near
