Federations | John Joseph Adams.
John has posted the table of contents to Federations, the anthology to which I have made my latest sale. Excuse me while I get a little starstruck and nostalgic.
The first author I ever shared with my father was also my first science fiction author. When I was around 8 or 9, I stumbled across a little book in my grade school library called Dragonsong by Anne McCaffery. To this day, it is one of less than half a dozen books I have read more than once, an honor I reserve only for the most important titles in my life or, books I had to read for more than one class through my long education. One of the first books I ever bought with my own money was an omnibus of the Dragonriders trilogy. The first (and as far as I know, only) fan letter I wrote as a child was to Anne McCaffery. I think she even wrote back.
My Dad and I read every single McCaffery book she published, pretty much. She was one of those authors who the library system managed to get new books for, oddly enough. Whereas I was mostly stuck reading Golden Age SF in the bowels of the local library (literally, the SF section was in the basement, in the back corner), the new books shelf seemed to always have a McCaffery.
My Dad and I didn’t talk SF very much, but most of the time we did, it was regarding the latest McCaffery book. We had long discussions when [spoilers] Pern turned out to be a lost human colony of space farers. [/spoilers] Later books, I haven’t been on top of. Since her son started writing them, I haven’t read them, not because of any reason other than lack of time, and well, nobody to talk about them with.
In one of the last conversations I had with my Dad, when he was in the hospital the day we learned that he wasn’t going to get any better and that it was time was hospice care (a medical term meaining ‘give up and die gracefully’), I signed a copy of All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories for him, telling him that he could beat the cancer like a pulp hero beats up Nazis. He stood up, all 90-some pounds of what was left of him, and gave me the strongest hug I think he ever gave me and he said, “I’m proud of you son.” I must have acted surprised because he said, “I’ve always been proud of you.”
That was probably the most emotional moment of my life, and will remain so for a very long time. At least until I get to tell my own child the same thing,
Today, I feel like I earned that pride a little more, and I know that if he were here, he would be as excited about me being in this book as I am.
