Once a nerd, always a nerd

When I started junior high, I became a science fiction geek--or was I a nerd? I was certainly considered a dork, I was a nerdy geeky dork? (if you want to know which you are, take the test. I score Pure Nerd, with over 90% nerdosity).

If you go to literature map you can type in the name of an author, and it will appear, surrounded by a cluster of other names. The idea is that you will probably like the ones that are closer. At another point on this very interesting site, a box asks you to enter the names of three of your favorite writers. This is the kind of question I usually can't answer because, really, how can I choose?

But for many years, my answers would have been Dorothy Dunnett, Joanna Russ and Samuel R. Delany.

I have just discovered that Joanna Russ has been unable to write for the last ten years because she has arthritis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a condition closely related to fibromyalgia).
Russ's literary criticism I found later when I was in graduate school. I just bought her book of essays To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction when I was out looking for books by Ellen Willis a while back. Some of them I have read before, many years ago, and others are new to me. I will enjoy reading them, and then rereading all of her fiction.

At a Science Fiction Conventions (WisCON) she was interviewed by another of my very favorite writers of all time, Samuel R. Delany. Delany is another writer of fiction who is also a brilliant teacher and thinker.

Absorbant remarked on regrets about books or other things one sheds when moving, and my first thought was of the huge collection of records I abandoned in California when I moved to Minnesota. But of course, there was an even huger collection of paperback science fiction novels, with their original cheesy covers, that I bought with my allowance (back when 50 cents would buy you a book, and a nickel would get you the same book, used), and that I carted around with me for years. It seemed like a good idea at the time to get rid of them, but now I wish I had them, and the Marvel comic books I bought between 1972-1975. They were what helped me survive those six years of dorkdom, until I could become a professional nerd.