Hanging around D.C,

Having fun hanging around with old friends at the Nebula Awards weekend here in Washington.  Lots of sitting around in the bar and talking about people who aren't here.  Strictly social so far, but today I'll be getting together with editor and agent, separately.  So we'll move from milling and swilling to wheeling and dealing.

Yesterday we played tourist with a trip to The Library of Congress (or Congreff, as they ufed to spell it).  The tour was both interesting and a little sad, nostalgic.  As I think I've mentioned here, I used to live in Bethesda, before I left for college, and have wonderful memories of the LoC.  I was a chemistry nut back then, and I would sit for hours immersed in a 12-volume encyclopedia of chemical reactions, copying down equations that I could translate into experiments in my home laboratory.  Sometimes with loud or noxious results.

No kid can do what I used to do; take the trolley downtown and use the Library as a library.  Want a book, no problem; just look up the catalog number and write it on a slip of paper, and the minions would send your request to the basement via pneumatic tube, and the book would be delivered to your desk in a few minutes by courier.

The mechanism still exists, but only for members of Congress and their staffs, and other high government officials.  There are probably twice as many books now, in three buildings, and delivery takes thirty or forty minutes, with computers as well as pneumatic tubes.

And to be realistic, any kid with Google can access much more data much faster than I could, sitting at an oaken desk that might be two hundred years old.  Why do I feel sorry for him?

The most interesting exhibit, by far, was a reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson's library, which formed the nucleus of the new LoC after the British burned Washington in 1814.  He had his own system of classification (based on one devised by Francis Bacon) to arrange 6,487 volumes, which he sold to the government for $23,950.  There was another fire in 1851, which destroyed about two thirds of the volumes.  The collection now has about two thousand of the original volumes and three thousand replacements, which carefully match the lost editions.

John F. Kennedy famously told a party of Nobel Prize winners and other intellectuals, invited for lunch at the White House, "There has never been such a collection of talent and intellect gathered in this room since Thomas Jefferson dined here alone."

Speaking of famous people, I've enjoyed talking with astronaut Mike Fincke, who will be the keynote speaker at the banquet.  He's spent 48 hours in space-walk mode, more than any other human being.  A very smart guy, who incidentally has read a lot of science fiction.

Signed books for a couple of hours yesterday.  One fan gave me a copy of The Bridge of San Luis Rey to read – I'd mentioned Thornton Wilder in my sffnet column – but then ran off without explaining why.   It's been forty years since I read it, so I'll enjoy rereading it on the way home.

There was a panel on writing humor which, as expected, didn't give me any killer tips.  I guess the subject has a butterfly-like quality:  if you can pin it down, it's dead.

I remember reading an article in the Washington Post when I was in high school here, about literary cocktail parties – specifically about meeting Art Buchwald.  The writer described Buchwald's scowling cigar-chomping public persona, and said it was generally true that humor writers are in person very grim, where serious writers tend to reach for the lampshade at parties.  I'm in between, I think, though some people would roll their eyes at that assessment.  "What, he thinks he's serious?" or "What, he thinks he's frivolous?"  I am all things to all fen.

Joe