The SMOKIN’ ROUTE THE SMOKIN’ ROUTE BEING AN ACCOUNT OF THE JOURNEY OF GUY & ROSY LILLIAN TO THE CITY OF SPOKANE, WASHINGTON AND SASQUAN, THE 73RD WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION AUGUST 18-25, 2015. Composed by Guy at 1390 Holly Avenue, Merritt Island FL 32952 [email protected] * GHLIII Press Publication #1183 Oh, what a journey it could have been. And oh, what a journey it was. In our dreams, we would have roaded it to South Dakota, walked the Greasy Grass at Little Big Horn, sought the majesty of Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument, whistled the theme to Close Encounters at Devil’s Tower, then driven on through Montana and Idaho to Spokane. But those fantasies evaporated with the bad luck and ill will of April, which gutted us financially and emotionally. It seemed, that spring and early summer, that Rosy and I would have only an ambassador to send to Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention – its souvenir book. This was the sixth major convention for which Rosy and/or I had edited the program/souvenir book, and possibly the most satisfying. I did Let the Good Times Roll for Nolacon II with Peggy Ranson – without benefit of computer layout programs. I love the book but our primitive tools and lack of experience shows. La belle and I worked on Noreascon 4’s with Geri Sullivan, a layout genius of incomparable talent, and while the book is beautiful, we credit that mostly to Geri. Rosy’s book for Chicon 7 is jolly and colorful, but was done at such a breakneck, last-nanosecond pace that its rife typos glare like burning coals. The tome I did for the Raleigh NASFiC has its attractions – great Brad Foster robot art and a devastating photo of Catharine Asaro, for instance – but is mostly a guide to program participants. Then there’s the huge book I edited for the 50th DeepSouthCon – it nearly bankrupted the concom, and I messed up line spacing throughout, but it’s too much a labor of love for my home convention and its Rebel and Phoenix Awards for me to judge rationally. Sasquan’s book was the first time Rosy and I could truly collaborate on a project, me as editor, assimilator, and general visionary, her as layout engineer and InDesign expert. I got my job done early, throwing together a fanzine-like dummy of the book, so she had plenty of time to turn my slop into a volume of professional quality. Which makes the Sasquan book sound dry and lifeless – and it was anything but. I am far from the brightest nova in the night sky, but I did have some definite ideas about the job. Sasquan began life under a pall. Spokane was not fandom’s first choice for the 2015 Worldcon; it won over Helsinki due only to the vagaries of the Australian ballot. I got the strong impression that fans of the Finnish bid – though not the bidders themselves – felt cheated, and blamed Spokane. Furthermore, Sasquan’s committee labored within a harsh and hostile local environment in Seattle, locus of the state’s fanac. Its many fandoms were having at each other fang and claw – as I found when I tried to recruit locals for the convention newsletter and other publication tasks. (Of course, the Corflu crowd is very strong in the northwest. I’m an outsider to that corner of fanzine fandom – there’s a suspicion there that didn’t help.) Finally, thanks in part to a NASFiC that apparently did not go well, I sensed a cruel disdain for Sasquan’s honcho, Bobbie DuFault, bad juju visited upon her name even after her untimely death. It wasn’t just fannish mistrust of the concom that afflicted Sasquan. Outside fannish pressures also came to bear. In April the Hugo nominations came out – and the onslaught of the Sad Puppies began. You know the story and are probably sick of it. For my present purposes, let’s just say that the right-wing paranoia that clogged the Hugo ballot served as additional weight on Sasquan’s back. I saw it as my duty to enliven this sour situation. The Sasquan program book, I decided, should have a lively, goofy tone to counteract the bad vibes groaning about the convention. This was all the easier to manage thanks to the convention’s Artist Guest of Honor and resident genius, Brad Foster. His cover illo – see my cover – had blown us away. His vision of a dopey bigfoot, realized on the front of the first progress report and various fillos therein … well, that settled it. I’d use that silly sasquatch, whom I presumed to name “Hugo,” to bring the souvenir book unity and style – and keep it light. Rosy got the message and came up with the footprint idea to promote the idea of Hugo the Sasquatch, fetched for worldcon by a pair of naïve aliens, wandering through the Worldcon spreading destruction in his wake. Anyway, we got it done, we got it proofread by as many eyes as I could enlist, made every correction they and we could find, and got it to the printer on time. We’d done our best, cut no corners, and could feel pride in our work. There matters stood as August came around, and its days began to fall behind us. As we had no chance of attending, I thought, I expected I’d be reading about Sasquan online, straining to follow the ceremonies via Livestream (last year’s show was an all-but-incomprehensible cacophony of overlapping soundtracks), and sweating out the chances of my Hugo favorites – Mike Resnick and Toni Weisskopf in the editor categories, Journey Planet as best fanzine, Steve Stiles for fan artist, and Cixin Liu’s magnificent Three- Body Problem for best novel – on the ballot thanks to the character and good sense of author Marco Kloos, who withdrew his Lines of Departure, whether out of embarrassment over a Puppies endorsement or for other reasons, who knows. Oh well, we thought: not the first Worldcon we’d had to enjoy from afar. Then came August 11. I’m not at liberty to disclose how the money came free, or its source, but on that marvelous day money did come free, and I wrote in my journal, “Oh dear God we’re going to Sasquan.” In one week. Rosy and her stepmother Patty took matters in hand, preparing a budget contrasting my immediate plan – gassing up the car, throwing a change of underwear into a grocery bag and booking it – with Rosy’s sensible alternative: flying. It would take six times as long to drive and cost three times as much. They contacted a family friend in the travel business, who obtained seats for us at a decent rate – rather miraculous for such a late date – and that was that, cat. The die was cast. I won’t bore you with my paranoid delusions about the flights – which would be five in number: three to get there (Orlando-Salt Lake City, SLC to Seattle, Seattle to Spokane), two to get back (we scored a direct flight Spokane to Salt Lake). Suffice it to say that when we finally left, in the pre-dawn hours of August 18, the glorious reds and yellows and whites of Orlando from aloft were not quite lost on me. Such is the nature of Xanax: the pill I popped took enough edge off my terror to let the good stuff shine through. The western mountains, when we reached them, were awesome – the deep shadows, the rugged ridges, the impassable cliffs of the wilderness below were heart-filling and fear-shaming. Having my phobia abashed made the views even more glorious. Coming into Seattle, a hearty religious discussion in progress with a nice Mormon row-mate (who once crashed on Mitt Romney’s floor), Mount Rainier framed itself, white and magnificent, in the portside window. And was that Puget Sound, wide and beautiful, below us? Awe gave way to annoyance once we reached Seattle. Our flight was some 40 minutes late and we’d missed our connection. While Rosy called her travel agent buddy and tried to deal with Delta Airlines, that monument to airline arrogance, I practiced for old age with two wheelchair rides around the expansive terminal, seeking the appropriate gates. No, I wasn’t suddenly stricken and unable to walk – just stupid from Alprazolam. I don’t know how I avoided justifiable assault from those actually needing such assistance, and righteous arrest. All I do know is that when we finally boarded our tiny jet for the 32-minute bop across Washington State, Toni Weisskopf greeted us from her seat. Worldcons begin with a first fan sighting, and so Sasquan had begun. The turf below us looked mountainous and wooded – I imagined Hugo the sasquatch galumphing his way through its forests. Except when there were no forests. Just swathes of bare earth. We flew through a nasty yellow haze. It was impossible not to realize that eastern Washington was On Fire. Our landing was hard, our braking quick: our bellies strained against the seat belts. After 12 hours of stressful, if occasionally beautiful, travel, we were at our destination – Spokane, Washington, 2,368+ miles diagonally across America from where we’d woken up. And as a perfect punctuation to such a day, Delta lost my luggage. I spent a night of near-rage (although Delta did gift me with a complimentary tee shirt, correctly sized, and a wicked little razor) anticipating a convention spent in the same sweaty gear as I’d flown in.