Shared Dreams

I’ve enjoyed sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy through­out my life. I think that some of the authors I read heav­i­ly at an ear­ly age (espe­cial­ly Robert Hein­lein) have had a major effect on my per­son­al phi­los­o­phy and affect­ed every­thing I’ve done. Part of what I love is the opti­mism and hope­ful­ness inher­ent in so much of the genre—I don’t need to read dark or watch things, there’s enough of that in real life! Being trans­port­ed to com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent places through a good sto­ry is won­der­ful, and being able to tru­ly iden­ti­fy with the char­ac­ters makes it far eas­i­er to sus­pend dis­be­lief. Most of the SF&F I real­ly enjoy is also pep­pered with humor, often wry or off-kilter. 

I’ve had men­tion of var­i­ous SF&F books, movies, art, etc. strewn through­out my site in the past, but I decid­ed to pull things togeth­er a bit dif­fer­ent­ly now. So here are links to some of what I enjoy and what I’d like to share with others. 

Hap­pi­ly, Katie shares my love of the fan­tas­tic, and we’ve been able to enjoy many books togeth­er. It’s a good thing she liked it since she real­ly had no hope of avoid­ing the stuff. I read the unex­pur­gat­ed ver­sion of Hein­lein’s Stranger in a Strange Land to her while she nursed, as it had just been released in 1990 when she was born. 

Some­one once told me that there isn’t any­thing wrong with SF/F read­ers except those weirdos who go to the con­ven­tions. Well, I must confess—I have been to one con­ven­tion sev­er­al times. Drag­on Con is a great event that occurs every sum­mer here in Atlanta. It’s all a for­mer SO’s fault, as he took me to my very first Drag­on Con around 1987 or 88. 

I am guilty of spread­ing the con­ta­gion to the next gen­er­a­tion, hav­ing intro­duced Katie to her first con at the ten­der age of 5. She had just as much fun as I did. If you think the peo­ple-watch­ing is fun for adults, imag­ine it as a child! We went to explore the art show and came upon a sec­tion of nude paint­ings. Katie said in a stage whis­per “Mom­my! Those girls for­got their panties!” The artist was near­by and I was afraid he would spew soda all over some­one else’s paint­ing. The first thing that popped into my mind was “well, maybe it was hot that day.” Katie replied with “Oh. Maybe so.” and went on to the next sec­tion with­out anoth­er thought. For the next few years she referred to Drag­on Con as “that place where the girls for­got their panties,” which occa­sioned some very odd looks from peo­ple who don’t know the sto­ry. (The Geor­gia Renais­sance Fes­ti­val already had the label “that place where peo­ple dress real fun­ny and act silly.”)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel.

Back To Top