What went before: So, I've read 108 out of a possible 197 manuscript pages. Will finish that tomorrow.

Otherwise, a Very Quiet day here at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory (except Now, because Trooper is yelling for Happy Hour NEOW!). I am for some reason Just Exhausted, so it will be an early night hereabouts.

I watched "Rogue" last night from Dr. Who. The Doctor did look ever-so-tasty in his Regency duds, though I'm going to be very disappointed in him if he doesn't find the lad.

Hope everyone has had an enjoyable Friday.

Stay safe; I'll see you tomorrow.

#

Saturday. Cloudy and cooler.

Slept late. Thinking about sleeping some more, but! Today is change-the-cat-boxes day, so -- duty first, then nap, if I'm still So Inclined.

It rained last night -- a lot -- and the 'beans are calling for more, off and on, during the day.

Tali and Rook did engage me before breakfast in a vigorous game of Spring, which presently goes like this:

1 Rook and Tali Gather Round, looking up at me Expectantly.

2 I Produce a Spring and show it to them.

3 They wriggle.

4 I throw the spring.

5 They chase it at turnpike speeds (Tali runs faster than Rook, but this isn't an advantage, as she often over-shoots the target).

6 Rook (usually) recovers the spring (if Tali manages to get to it first, he takes it away from her), and brings it back to me, so I can throw it again.

6a If Tali retains the spring, she bats it around until she loses it, then comes back to me, eyes wide, waiting for me to Produce a Spring. However!

6b The game ends when the spring is lost.

7 VARY: Rook hides the spring and then comes back to me, eyes wide. I go find it and throw it again. This Variation has a three-throw limit or ends when 6b is invoked.

So, that's the news from the Cat Farm. I note that this time last Saturday, I was driving twisty little roads through tidy Vermont towns in the Pouring! Down! Rain! and wondering if it just made more sense to pull over, buy a house, and never drive anywhere again.

What're y'all doing that's interesting, today?

Sharon says: I think that these two installments by Steve Miller explain themselves pretty well. Back in the day, Cyberplane 1 and 2 won a web-writing award, the name of which escapes me at this distance. We were nicer to each other on the internet, back then.

#

This is the first issue of Cyberplane; it is a direct descendant of the old Paper Plane fanzine that I published when I lived at Apt 3A 119 Willow Bend Drive, Owings Mills, Md., 21117. In some ways I'm sorry that it's not appearing in the original format of a snailmailed, mimeographed personalzine....on the other hand I gave that device -- that mimeo machine -- away to some fans in deepest PA, where it may yet turn out crudsheets with every fourth crank of the handle.

So Cyberplane #1 comes to you via the web from Steve Miller, RR2, Box 4570, Winslow, ME 04901. LoCs (letters of comment) can be sent via email to kinzel@mint.net; additional issues will arrive webward from time to time, if anyone notices this issue. You CAN send stamps, though I'm not sure what the correct postage should be...This is a by whim production; there are no subscribers. Copyright 1995 by Steve Miller. The textured background is my own; I also make web pages....

....If none of that makes sense to you, perhaps I should mention that long ago and far away I was considered a science fiction fan. That was a technical term back when most science fiction was in books and magazines and fans were readers rather than watchers. Many, many fans were also writers, and some of the fans I dealt with have, like me, become "filthy pros" in one field of writing or another.

I have, alas, not given up many of my fannish ways. I still think of the year not in traditional holidays but in condays: April, BaltiCon and MiniCon weekend...also known as Easter. DisClave weekend, also known as Memorial Day to the uninitiated. And of course, WorldCon...frequently known as Labor Dayweek. Having been to something over 100 cons over the years my inclination to think in this fashion may perhaps be understood.

I also have kept many of my fannish odds and ends. My Kelly Freas caricature, my old x-rated issue of Holier Than Thou, many of my convention badges. And, of course, the illos sent to me by artists for the next issue of my fanzine. Original art!

Illo by Rotsler

I am not above the lure of the convention's song. I am, however, too cynical to enjoy sleeping on the floor in crash space; and too experienced to travel cross country on $6 a day with any degree of comfort. Once upon a time however....

#

Con-Fession of a Con-Addict

In the summer of 1973 the fannish world had a near miss. Not only did the famous Khoutek comet fail to mesmerize and astonish billions, it being one of the real duds of the 20th century, right up there with the Edsel, the Lisa, the Apple III, and the Commordore IV, but also I failed to attend my first "real" sf convention.

I'm not sure who lucked out: I was at Clarion West and rather than go out to the con (in Vancouver perhaps?) I spent my weekend working on my writing. Somehow I thought that was much more to the purpose, having traveled by bus from Baltimore to Seattle to attend a writing workshop, and not to sit around talking trash with a bunch of mere fans. Sigh. I was as opinionated then as I am now and with far less experience to back it up... And so my first convention didn't happen months after I returned from Clarion.

You can probably blame Sue Miller, who was then Sue Nice, for my first appearance at convention. She read Analog every month ( I read Amazing, Fantastic, and IF or one of it's brethren) and it wasn't unusual for us to stare at the con listings and wonder if we should go to one of these things. When it was apparent that I was actually going to get a job in the field...well, it was obvious that we needed to go to a convention. And since we'd missed BaltiCon that year, the first con we got to was DisClave.

I will not bore you with the entire details of the event; I couldn't, having mixed them up with so many other events that took place at the Sheraton Park. What struck me from the start, and what helped lead to my addiction, was that I was among readers -- lots of readers! -- who knew enough about the same things I did to agree with me -- or argue with me -- from a position of information. These people might LOOK weird, but they didn't think it odd that one might happen to pick up a book at 7 PM and put down the second or third book in the series at 6 AM just before going to work...

In short order I became involved in BSFS, the Baltimore Science Fantasy Society, and I became a con fan. I'd drop everything to run to Pghlange, and I'd go to anything dealing with SF at the Sheraton Park hotel...an edifice that could probably have been bought for a permanent worldcon home for the amount of money that fans spent there.

My involvement in fandom, and in convention fandom in particular, got to the point that I might begin a conversation with someone at a room party in, say, Kentucky, continue it the next week in say, Michigan, and finish it at a party in, say Ohio, three weeks later. Not only might I have these kinds of conversations, I faunched after them. I needed them.

The energy of conventions got in my blood; I found myself able and (all too!) willing to give directions to hotels and restaurants in Anne Arbor and Washington DC and Columbus (that's in Ohio and is one of the least visited cities in the US). I also found myself recognizing stretches of interstate 400 miles away from home from the last time I'd been there -- say three weeks before.

At the risk of sounding a bit like one of Andy Offut's convention speeches, there I was, a young man from the backwoods of Owings Mills, Maryland and I was not only going places, but I was doing things in those places and I was even welcomefar from home. This was all a bit of a surprise to me. So much so that I needed hints about which cheese to eat (and Joe Haldeman may still consider me uncouth for never having had feta cheese in my life at the time we happened to be at the same party at a con in Ann Arbor); but I came from a poor but boring background where I'd led a very sheltered life away from anything but the blandest and most Baltimore of foods.

I also discovered the unexpected lure of all night partying. As my involvement grew from wide-eyed innocent to WorldCon bidding insider I became more and more involved in the faanish side of things and less in the sercon (serious constructive) side of things. Oh, I still wrote my fiction and my book reviews, but I was not as likely to attend the inevitable "Universe Building" panel as I was to hit all of the open and and as many of the closed parties as I could.

Along the way, I lost my way. Some of the all night parties led to waking up in someone else's room. Some ended up with a quiet breakfast with someone I'd kissed for the first time three hours before. Some ended up merely prelude to a virtually sleepless weekend followed by a 20 hour crash when I got home. Work and homelife suffered....

And so by the time of the Miami worldcon my marriage was on the rocks; even as my father (who was living in Miami on a houseboat with a 19 year-old girlfriend) was telling me to "hang on to that girl", the former Sue Nice was plainly not long to be Mrs. Steve Miller. The world of the con and the mundane world are not meant to be lived simultaneously for long periods of time...

For a short while I used conventions to avoid being alone. Then, rather suddenly, my writing was selling, I was reviewing books for the Baltimore Sun, and my new position as editor of a weekly community newspaper made conventions harder to get to.

This is a work in progress...thanks for your understanding-- Try Steve Miller If you haven't had enough you can try number 2 in the series

For those who were wondering about 2025's chapbook (remember that?) -- roughed out, including the back matter, but not the front matter, we're looking at 29,780 words/136 manuscript pages. Contents are: Author's Explanation, Neutral Ground, Outtake: The Healer Removed; Core Values; Text of the Heinlein Acceptance Speech.

This is still in Very Rough Shape, and it naturally takes second place to the novel, which! I'll begin reading tomorrow, because, yes, I DID get All The Stuff Done, and it is time -- nay! past time! -- to go back to work.

It's my intention to post the first two installments (the only two installments I can find, and, indeed, possibly the only two that were written) of Cyberplane, Steve Miller's electronic fanzine from 1996, to The Usual Places, possibly tonight, and Devote Myself To My Craft, tomorrow.

Which is to say, Friday on the East Coast of the USA will be a Planned Electron-Free Day at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.

So! Everybody stay safe; I'll see you, for sure, on Saturday.