This one’s hearsay; but Jerry won’t talk about it anymore. He told me about it a few days after the Chicago Worldcon.
Jerry reads a little German. Sometime before the convention he had read through a German copy of The Mercenary. Jerry found that the translator had taken out all explanations, all justifications, anything that might express the reasoning behind the violence in that violent, bloody story. There was only the blood.
That’s enough to set any writer to thinking of assassination. But there was worse to come. The German translator attended that convention. Jerry confronted him one evening in the Con Suite.
Some of you may recall the shouting match. Jerry quotes only one phrase: “But you are a fascist, you should sound like a fascist!” But it went on long enough for Jerry—who is an ex-communist—to recognize that the man was a Party member.
Jerry Pournelle likes to describe himself as a 13th century liberal. (“The king is taking too much power to himself! The rights of the nobles are being unjustly eroded—”) And Jerry’s publisher had hired a communist to translate The Mercenary!
I didn’t fall out of my chair because I was hanging on to the poker table. I lost all dignity. I could see in Jerry’s face that I was near losing a friendship. I was lucky not to lose control of my sphincters! Jerry took it badly; but in ten years, he’ll see this as a very funny story.
I think he’s coming to realize that now. Why don’t you ask him about the German Translator? I’m sure it’ll bring a smile.
VIKING CON, 1983, Bellingham, Washington.
Bellingham is small and green and lovely. It also has the partly disused harbor and the scattering of survivalist enclaves that we needed for a massive collaboration novel, Footfall. Our need to research Bellingham made it convenient for Jerry and me to attend Viking Con.
“Lovely town! We’re going to destroy it,” we explained.
Our thanks to the pair of nice young ladies who drove us around. We got exactly what we wanted, even down to the X-shaped house with a tennis court placed to conceal the Enclave’s bomb shelter.
Jerry’s back was giving him hell that trip. I had to move the luggage, and I could have lived without his portable computer. One morning I watched him trying to put his socks on. He couldn’t reach his feet. Presently I said, “Just how close is this collaboration?”
He got his socks on. Desperation helps.
At the Banquet Jerry still looked like an integral sign, and he was in pain. A spine is supposed to look like that; but sideways? Ed Bryant, as Toastmaster, was introducing people by the “Surprise!” technique: describe the victim, then reveal his name at the last instant. When we heard references to Damon and Pythias and Siamese twins and male pair-bonding, Jerry said, “He’s doing it to us.”
I said, “Yeah. When he says my name, you stand up.”
“—Author of RINGWORLD—”
Standing up wasn’t easy, but Jerry would have done it if he knew it would kill him. It took Ed about thirty seconds (with laughter and whispering to cover the delay) to decide that there was no way out: he’d have to follow his notes.
“—Author of The Mercenary—” I stood up.
Next Ed began describing Wendy Fletcher, one of the Guests of Honor. It became clear that he loved Wendy not in the normal fashion, but as Dante Alighieri loved Beatrice, with worship. The audience was getting sugar diabetes. So, evidently, was Wendy.
Ed, already a bit flustered, couldn’t imagine why he was being laughed at now. Heads were blocking his view of Wendy, who appeared to have her forefinger up her nose to the second knuckle.
WESTERCON 1974, Santa Barbara: the Randall Garrett Story. I can’t tell the Randall Garrett story.
• • •
• • •
ADRIENNE AND IRISH COFFEE
Bergin’s House of Irish Coffee was already a favorite with my siblings and cousins. When my first story appeared, it was very natural for me to go home from the LASFS via Bergin’s, and drink Irish coffee while reading “The Coldest Place”…and wish it had illustrations and my name on the cover…
I did it again with “Wrong Way Street.” I learned how much better a story looks in print, because I could stop worrying about minute changes.
“World of Ptavvs,” the novella, had my name on the cover. Jack Gaughan had done pictures of all the strange life forms I’d dreamed up for the Slaver Empire. This was it! This was what I was after, this was why I had written for a year without selling a damn word. I developed a strong preference for Irish coffee.
Somewhere in there, I started taking Adrienne Martine to Bergin’s. She too was a novice writer. She says that Bergin’s should have put our names on the wall, for all the Irish coffee we consumed. We may have overdone it. Adrienne developed an allergy to caffeine.
We’d spin stories at each other, then poke holes in the plot lines. Hers were generally fantasy: a heroine in her late teens finds a portal out of an intolerable situation into a world where magic is more powerful. I don’t remember what tales I told her. Some reached print, no doubt, and some didn’t.
I nagged her from time to time, and so did everyone else, about finishing some novel. She was good at starting them.
She taught me how to use chopsticks.
Not long after we met, she married and moved to New York. We still met, but not often. I took her to dinner at the New York World Science Fiction convention in 1967, and then followed her into a party, where I met Marilyn “Fuzzy Pink” Wisowaty.
Fuzzy Pink and I wound up married and living in Brentwood, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Thursday nights after the LASFS meetings, several of us would gather at the Niven house for poker. I took to serving Irish coffee at these gatherings. In this limited range I became an expert bartender.
Jerry Pournelle was among the regulars.
The damn trouble was that the games would continue until four or six in the morning.
Hour 25 is a science fiction radio show that runs from ten to midnight Fridays. One evening Jerry and I arrived to promote our books and take phone calls. We were wiped out, exhausted; we could barely talk. It became clear to us that the Thursday poker games were ruining us. They had to stop.
Adrienne Martin-Barnes became an agent. She has always thought of herself as a muse, germinating stories in others. Ultimately she did what a thousand friends had been nagging her to do: she finished a novel and sold it. And now she’s published several.
I kept my taste for Irish coffee. On Saturday night at a LosCon (local Los Angeles SF conventions) I generally operate an Irish coffee bar, closing down when the liquor runs out.
IRISH COFFEE BY NIVEN
You wouldn’t think it would take much effort, would you? Irish coffee has only four ingredients! Serving only Irish coffee is work for an idiot, if others are doing all of the work except pouring.
My first Irish coffee bar opened on Sunday night of the 1985 LosCon. I offered because I thought it might be fun. Emotionally I was prepared for failure. Nobody had tried this before.
Subsequent LosCons have featured an Irish coffee bar on Saturday night. Oddly enough, it changes nothing.
In a pinch you can always go to hotel coffee. We almost did. I brought my Bunn coffeemaker, and remembered to bring all the other stuff: filters and filter cones and pots and all that (though I forgot plates and spoons). Then I cut the cord on the coffeemaker by slamming it in the lid of my trunk! Committee member Bob Null repaired it on the spot.
Quantities were guesswork. I poured by hand, and tasted often, trying to get the proportions right. Hic! Excuse me. I had to do that every time, because the Committee keeps changing the size of the cups on me…and finally I thought of bringing a measuring cup.
I learned of another problem the first time I tried this outside of a LosCon. Is the kid old enough to drink? Did I offer to bartend in order to tell a reader and fan what he can’t have? I did not. The woman who helped me out in Dallas and Houston was tough enough to do that part of the job for me. In
Los Angeles I’ve had to refuse two or three customers; but we had to insult scores of them in Texas. Then again, those were comics conventions…
What follows is my recipe for Elsewhere-Cons. If I can drive to the convention, I have another list: I can bring some of my own equipment. You should consider doing the same.
The proportions were developed by experiment, after I realized that I can mix bigger quantities in a nice stable measuring cup and then pour into whatever cups the committee has bought me. Proportions are a matter of taste. Feel free to fiddle.
I like stable cups that don’t tip over when I pour. I never get them, but that’s what I want. The whipped cream should not be too stiff to flow; you want it to melt a little on the coffee. Brandy or rum work as alternatives to Irish, but use less sugar. Don’t add sugar if you’re using liqueurs instead of Irish, and you won’t use much of that until the Irish runs out or the line thins, because you have to keep explaining what it’s for.
The two most important rules are these:
1. You should run out of booze first. You’d feel like an idiot running out of whipped cream or ground coffee or sugar or cups when there’s two bottles of whiskey left. (Once or twice the Committee has had to search a darkened city for whipped cream or cups.)
2. The booze should run out before the bartender collapses. Rather than staggering off to bed after spilling too many drinks in a row, you should be forced to quit while there’s still time to join a party or a singing group.
Why bother?
Put it this way. You’ve worked your tale off to become a well-known author. If you came to a convention, you came to be admired, like the rest of us. It gives you back your motivation. You’ll work better afterward.
But they make you scintillate! They stop you for autographs and pop quizzes on your work, in the halls and at parties and even in the restaurant! Anyone who ever stood in an autograph line thinks you should remember his name. Enough of that can wipe the smile off your face and make you forget how to string words together…and they still expect you to be witty.
What can you do at a convention, in public, that will take you off the hook for a while?
This was one of the brightest ideas I ever had. Nobody expects me to scintillate. They expect me to pour; nothing else. When the Irish runs out, then I’m ready to scintillate again.
IRISH COFFEE requirements
Proportions
1/4 cup Irish whiskey.
3/4 cup strong coffee, noticeably stronger than normal.
1 heaping tablespoon brown sugar or to taste.
First time: stir like hell, then taste, then adjust. Keep it sweet.
Pour plastic cups half-full or better, then add glob of whipping cream.
If it tastes too strong, you may want to use less booze; but try making the coffee stronger first!
Filling the plastic cup may be a mistake. If it’s big and tall, it may topple over.
Always stir completely. Don’t get sloppy with that!
Tools
To serve 200 cups I will need:
A 2-cup or 4-cup measuring cup.
7 or 8 half-liters or fifths Irish whiskey (Jameson’s or Bushmills are good).
1 bottle Sambuca or Grand Marnier or almost any liqueur that isn’t fruity (interesting variants).
3 pounds Mocha Java coffee, ground appropriately. I use a Bunn coffeemaker, so grind the coffee fine.
5 quarts heavy cream.
4 pounds of brown sugar (or Demerara sugar or white sugar, in order of preference).
A refrigerator or portable icebox for the cream, or just a container of ice; no big deal here.
Working room! A stretch of counter, or a big table. The more room I have to work in, the better, up to a point.
300 or more cups. (Yes, I said I’d make 200. I could be wrong. Running out of cups has nothing to recommend it.) Use foam plastic. Better: there are plastic cups with handles, and they look more elegant than the foam cups, and they’re stable. Don’t buy thin plastic that will burn a customer’s fingers if there’s hot stuff in it!
A sink would be nice. Otherwise someone has to keep going for water for the coffee.
A garbage can or wastebasket. It takes either a big one, or many, or one that gets emptied frequently (not by the bartender).
Help! The LosCon event was a dead dog party that started at 8 P.M. I looked up at a line like the autograph line at a WorldCon! I needed a permanent volunteer to make the coffee and whip the cream, continually, and things still didn’t slow down until twenty minutes before the Irish ran out.
Mixing bowl and mixer for the cream.
A bowl for sugar (digging into the box slows me down).
Bunn coffeemaker, with all accessories: plastic cone and many paper filters. OR anything that makes coffee.
Containers for coffee. 3 glass and 1 thermos worked out fine.
At least 2 large spoons (tablespoons or thereabouts).
At least 2 plates to put them on.
Measuring spoons for coffee. Use large ones.
A jigger.
I WILL BRING my own mug or buy one at the Convention. (I’m entitled to a perk, and that’s it. Also I’m likely to lose track of which drink is mine.)
CLEANING UP IS SOMEBODY ELSE’S JOB.
• • •
• • •
ONE NIGHT AT THE DRACO TAVERN
This was the script used for Kathy Sanders’s group presentation at the WorldCon Masquerade, Los Angeles, 1984. Steven Barnes played “Rick Schumann.” I played “Larry.”
Drew and Kathy Sanders generally win major awards in the Masquerades. In 1984 Drew was running the Masquerade. Kathy was on her own.
She began making costumes more than a year early. By the time she finished she had duplicated a dozen of the most alien characters from my stories.
I wrote the script. Steven and I recorded the sound background early.
The kzin and thrint costumes were hot. I had to fan the occupants through their open mouths. The puppeteer must have been worse yet, though it was designed so that Kathy was half out of it until we were called.
I’d seen previous attempts at a Pierson’s puppeteer costume. A puppeteer has three legs and two heads. Kathy in her costume had one leg bound up against her chest; heads empty and propped up (they flopped over the first time she tried it); and her arms for the forelegs, on short stilts because human arms aren’t long enough. Muscle structure was quilted in, following the Bonnie Dalzell illustration for Ballantine Books, and it looked amazingly lifelike.
She wasn’t exactly agile, though.
We won the Master’s Award for “Funniest.”
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
ONSTAGE:
RICK SCHUMANN behind bar. The bar is vertical to the audience.
YELLOW BUGS around a table.
WUNDERLANDER and GROG at the bar.
QARASHT seated alone, sense-cluster retracted.
ACTION, simultaneously—
RICK finishes preparing the BUGS’ order, circles bar and takes them a tray with enough liqueur glasses.
RICK:
“Here you are, gentlemen.”
BUGS:
“Queepee?” [sound done with whistle or some such]
LARRY enters, pulling down zipper or opening buttons and shaking off the cold or the heat (to signal his entry from outside) while he looks around. He heads for the QARASHT.
RICK:
“It’s arak. You’ll taste licorice and some other—Wups!”
RICK moves to intercept LARRY.
LARRY:
[to QARASHT] “Hello, I’m—”
RICK:
“I wouldn’t talk to the qarasht if I were you. It doesn’t want company.”
LARRY:
“How can you tell?”
RICK:
“It’s got its sense cluster retracted.”
LARRY:
“Now, that’s my problem. I don’t kno
w any of these aliens. Would you be the bartender?”
RICK:
“I own the Draco Tavern. Rick Schumann, at your service. What can I get you?”
LARRY:
“Irish coffee, and a little advice. [indicates WUNDERLANDER] Is he human?”
MACHINE PEOPLE GIRL enters, goes to QARASHT. QARASHT extrudes sense cluster as she enters. RICK moves behind the bar and goes to work, interrupting himself to talk and gesture expansively. He’s showing off, as if he owns the customers too.
Other aliens are entering—
ENTER:
JINXIAN and CRASHLANDER together
BELTER (?)
RICK:
“That’s a Wunderlander. Human, but from one of the colonies. Our lady of the beard isn’t quite human. She’s a Machine People, from the Ringworld. I doubt she can have rishathra with a Qarasht, but she’ll probably offer.”
LARRY:
[embarrassed] “Hey, can they hear us?”
RICK:
“Naw, they’ve all got sonic shields. The Jinxian and the Crashlander, they’re human too, from Jinx and We Made It. The Belter, the one with the funny haircut, he’s from right here in the solar system—”
ENTER MOTIE MEDIATOR
ENTER KZIN and PUPPETEER, together
RICK continues:
“You’ll like the Motie Mediator. Hell, she can interpret for the rest of them. Uh oh.”
LARRY:
“What’s wrong?”
RICK:
“It’s all right. It’s a kzin and a puppeteer, but they don’t seem to be fighting.”
LARRY:
[indicates GROG] “The, uh, hairy cone at the end of the bar looks interesting…”