Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson (12 page)

LIVING AND WORKING WITH POUL ANDERSON
by Karen Anderson

Poul and I
met and lived our life in the world of science fiction.

At Chicon II in 1952, he was a fan who had become a professional; and I, a reader who had become a fan, hoping to sell. Fewer than 1,000 were present, and it was easy for writer or neofan to talk to leading editors and prominent writers: John W. Campbell, Anthony Boucher, Willy Ley, L. Sprague de Camp, Robert Bloch. Professionals and fans swapped ideas with each other.

The single program track lasted three days; art shows weren’t yet invented, and Chicon only offered dealers a small display area at the back of the main program space. Regional conventions weren’t bid for; Worldcon rotation was unneeded. Philadelphia’s bid was contested by a relatively new California group, the Little Men, who’d held a penthouse party through the entire weekend. This extravagance bred hostility, and Philadelphia won for 1953.

Masquerades of the fifties were simply big costume parties, not always with dance music. In 1952, I embellished off-the-rack clothes and wore elaborate makeup. I failed to notice Theodore Sturgeon, with guitar as Rhysling, but photographed costumes including Lester del Rey in evening dress, “disguised as a gentleman,” and many others. Then I saw Poul Anderson, devil’s horns sprouting from his forehead; after I snapped him menacing a young woman, we got to talking, and scarcely stopped for the rest of the convention except when we separated to sleep. He introduced me to fellow Minneapolis Fantasy Society members Gordon R. Dickson and Dale Rostomily. We exchanged addresses; I have never been much of a correspondent, but his letters were full of things to answer.

Poul had been a fan before selling. Throughout his life, he always had time for fans, and they more than repaid us in the support they offered when it was needed at the end. Even now, I benefit from his fans’ support.

His first stories went to Campbell at
Astounding Science-Fiction
, then the best paying and most respected magazine in the field; the first in digest format, it had smooth paper and trimmed edges.
ASF
’s
style and pay rate were copied by newcomers
Galaxy
, edited by Horace Gold,
and
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas. The editors were Campbell alumni, and Poul sold to both.

Theodore Cogswell was another MFS member moving toward professionalism. Clifford Simak dated from the pre-Campbell
Astounding Stories
. Now both a seasoned fiction professional and a veteran reporter for the Minneapolis
Star,
he readily gave advice to beginners. One piece which Poul passed on to me was the way to shorten an unwieldy story: “Tell the end.”

Poul and I knew by spring that we would marry, but he wanted warmer winters; I, cooler summers. Northern California, which he’d visited, seemed to me worth trying. He being already committed to a summer trip in Europe with his mother and brother, so I moved first.

I found an apartment in Berkeley and a job that would pay for it. The local fanclub was the Little Men, whose Worldcon bid had failed; I’d become acquainted via fanzines with the couple who ran it, Lester and Esther Cole. When the apartment next to mine fell vacant, I paid its rent until Poul arrived and moved in. We were married a few months later, with the attendance of my mother, locals in the SF world, and a few migrants from the MFS and the Washington Science-Fiction Association.

The Elves’, Gnomes’, and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Chowder and Marching Society, named from the comic strip “Barnaby,” won their bid for the 1954 Worldcon to be held in San Francisco. Poul and I became members of the organizing committee, which met at Les and Es’s home in El Cerrito. Tony Boucher, also a member, remarked apropos the snack she served that Es was notable for both making and being cheesecake.

Poul wrote progress reports; I stenciled and cranked them out on my mimeograph. His lighter output had previously included MFS entertainments and the Hoka stories he and Gordy had begun selling; now I ran some in my fanzines. The December 1953 issue of my
Zed
had his “Barbarous Allen;” borrowing a typo from WSFAn migrant Lee Jacobs, I called it a “filk song.” After a few more uses, the term stuck.

Our life was fan-oriented: gatherings of migrants who’d followed us, club meetings every other Friday at a store that sold and rented mystery and science fiction books. South of the UC campus, this was close enough to Tony’s that he could walk over for a yearly talk on SF and fantasy publishing.

But it was ruled by a pro’s needs. Returning from our honeymoon in Mexico, we found telegrams summoning Poul to a New York publisher. With hurriedly packed winter clothing, we flew to meet Ian and Betty Ballantine, who became valued friends. They planned simultaneous hard and soft cover editions of
Brain Wave
, whose first half had appeared in a dying prozine. Re-writing was minimal; all I can point to, comparing text, is the name Helga being substituted for Dagmar—that having been the stage name of a “dumb blonde” TV star. The novel continues to be reprinted; and currently it’s available both in print and from ibooks.

Tony, who edited
F&SF
from his Berkeley home, was a friend and neighbor from the start. Poul was grateful to him and co-editor Mick McComas, for—unlike other editors, including
ASF
’s Campbell and
Galaxy
’s Gold—asking the author to make story changes, instead of rewriting himself. “No other s-f editor does this, damn their eyes,” he wrote Tony in 1953, “and writers weep bitter tears at seeing their carefully constructed prose ripped to shreds . . . even if nobody ever seems to notice the difference.” The letter is reprinted in
The Wonder Years
, edited by Annette Peltz McComas.

One evening I answered a knock on the door by a stranger who said hesitantly that Tony Boucher had given him our address. This was R. Bretnor, whom we came to know as Reg. He and his wife Helen were connoisseurs of books, food, and Siamese cats. They were also impecunious enough to drink the same “red ink” jug wine we did.

Tony also put us in touch with the fairly Establishment-type Margaret and Eric St. Clair, and the decidedly non-Establishment Phil and Kleo Dick. Like Reg, Phil was a proverbial writer-with-employed-wife who was papering a wall with rejection slips.

The Dicks did have a television set. We must sometimes have just asked if we could come over—theirs was essentially the only TV set available to us for several years. We didn’t want to divert money that could go for such books as, after Reg had lent us his, our own copy of
The Hobbit
. Or cat food: we’d taken a Bretnor kitten.

In the summer of 1954 we rented a house. One hundred dollars a month was more than we could really afford after I’d quit my job, but it had a “granny room” I could fix up and rent. During those early days Poul took long walks while turning over ideas. Once he came home saying, “Can we afford $75 for an eleventh edition Encyclopedia Britannica?” Now, this was when a copy of Astounding cost twenty-five cents and Campbell paid $300 for a 10,000-word story; and I was very pregnant.

I may have debated for a whole minute before I said, “Go back there and get it before someone else finds it.” No one had, and I still think that was one of the best purchases we ever made. I used to read it for pleasure; what I learned was useful in story planning and reading first drafts. I still have it.

That house, just north of University Avenue and not far from the west side of the UC campus, became a gathering place for local and transplant fans. When Es Cole had her own baby, we had a party celebrating both; I gave Lance his first sip of champagne.

Astrid was six weeks old at the time of the convention. We took her along, as I planned on nursing her for as long as I could. I remembered my very traditional southern-reared Grandma Payne saying that as long as a woman nursing covered herself with a shawl, she was decent; and so I did. John Campbell commented on how admirable this was. She had a baby-watcher in the room for the masquerade, while Poul danced with Vampira to the music of Turk Murphy and I wore a scanty, glittering costume inspired by Bergey’s covers for
Planet Stories
.

After the convention, we settled down to an irregular routine, Astrid permitting. A portable bed for her stood beside ours; she woke me at some dark hour, I nursed her, then slept with her beside me until I woke.

Being a full-time pro, Poul didn’t have a day job or an alarm clock, but he kept regular working hours. He’d wake, breakfast alone, and go to his desk. We always had one room that was entirely his, with his desk and typewriter and needful books. In the Berkeley house, it was an attic room upstairs from the back bedroom that became Astrid’s; in Orinda, it was opposite our own bedroom.

This study was off-limits to all but a very few interruptions—“if it’s the Angel Gabriel blowing the Last Trump.” If he was expecting an important call from someone, he would say, “So-and-so has the rank of archangel.”

When he found a stopping point around midday, he came out for lunch; we usually had Danish-style open-faced sandwiches. There was a notional dinner time. He might just keep working, though sometimes he came out in the afternoon to say he’d work late. He pounded out penny-a-word adventure yarns, historical in addition to SF, for true pulps: ragged-edged magazines named for the rough paper they were printed on. Better work went for three and four cents to the smooth-paper magazines like
ASF
.

We went out occasionally. Besides fans, there were various pros we saw. Rog and Honey Phillips had moved from Chicago; with them, Reg, Mick McComas (still co-editing
F&SF
with Tony), and a few others. We held a low-stakes monthly poker game.

Saturdays and Sundays were work days like any others. Holidays came by chance: a spell of hot weather might send us to Muir Woods; his brother John might propose a camping trip in the Rockies with their mother. Or there would be a convention—should we fly or drive? If we drive, where shall we stop on the way? Will Astrid be with us?

Finances permitting, we would go to Westercon over July 4, Worldcon at Labor Day. We expected to serve on local committees and take whatever part in programs was expected.
Some fan occasions in Los Angeles, like “relaxicons” when Worldcon was distant, were almost convention-like in their size. We took Astrid on whatever of these travels we could.

The rental of the granny room through the UC student housing office worked well. Our first tenant, Mamoru Saiganji, was a black belt in judo; he and other Japanese whom he recommended promoted interests we’d both already had in Japanese lore and culture.

We were committee members again when the 1956 Westercon was held in Oakland.
A skit would often be put together by pros in those days, perhaps improvised during the event. I’d always been interested in theater, and Poul had helped write MFS spoofs. Together we wrote “Mag Net,” a
Dragnet
-inspired takeoff on the current state of the magazines in which we cast Rog Phillips, Tony Boucher, Dale Rostomily, and other locals plus some at-convention pickups. These included, memorably, Jerome Bixby improvising throughout on the piano.

It was a great success. Poul joined me in writing another satire to present at the 1958 Los Angeles Worldcon: I played the title role in “Alice in Thrillingwonderland” with some previously rehearsed Little Men and others in a semi-pickup cast that included Ben Stark, George Scithers, and F. M. Busby. Tony Boucher played the White A. P. and Doc Smith was the Upstage Lensman.

When the Mystery Writers of America began accepting science fiction as a form of mystery suitable for credentials, Poul had joined the local chapter. Miriam Allen de Ford was active in both fields. Speakers at their San Francisco dinner meetings ranged from a DEA agent with a sample of cocaine he allowed me to taste, to fantasy old-timer E. Hoffman Price—possibly the only person who ever met both H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

Stories about Poul’s Japanese-Swedish-American detective Trygve Yamamura went to second-rank digests like
The Saint
and
Alfred Hitchcock
. His one sale to the top-ranked
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
was a happy accident; he’d sent a locked-spaceship detective story, “The Martian Crown Jewels,” to Tony Boucher—who wrote back, “Our sister magazine can pay more for this. With your permission I’ll send it there.” His Trygve Yamamura novels were published in hardcover, but as the SF field improved, he decided to quit mystery writing. He said he felt as if he was continually reinventing the wheel.

In Tony’s Sherlockian group, the Scowrers and Molly Maguires of San Francisco, we met people high in various professions: the Galileo scholar Stillman Drake, the marine biologist Joel Hedgpeth. Stuart Palmer, of the Trained Cormorants of Los Angeles County, was a mystery writer, private detective, and occasionally a niche editor.

By the late fifties, not only was I suggesting story material to Poul and discussing his manuscripts as he wrote, he was occasionally sharing the by-line with me on stories when he felt I’d contributed enough. I sold verses to Tony Boucher at
F&SF
, and Cele Goldsmith at
Fantastic
bought a short fantasy, “The Piebald Hippogriff,” that inspired Bonnie Dalzell to a drawing still available on her web site. Avram Davidson, Tony’s successor at
F&SF
, liked a story he bought from me so much he gave me the germ of another.