I’ve just spent several weeks redoing cordwainer-smith.com, eight years after it first went up. For the first two or three years, I had a lot of energy for it. I did an ezine every couple of weeks and corresponded with fans who emailed from all over the planet. Several of us started the Cordwainer Smith Foundation, and out of that came the annual Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, which now has a home at Readercon.
Well… then what happened? I think I just burned out. I’m sure it’s not hard for you to imagine that being the kid of this particular Great Man has been a mixed bag. So when my life got busy with various forms of work and travel, I neglected the CS site. It didn’t help the software I was using for the old site (Dreamweaver) was clunky in a variety of ways. I kept saying, gotta get back to my father’s site.
Then recently I got some new website creation software (Xsitepro2, with a major virtune of automatically creating menus) and decided to make over the site. It’s involved cutting and pasting old material, reorganizing, updating the Rediscovery Award pages, and so on. I found that the one-page illustrated bibliography contributed to the original site by fan Mike Bennett could more easily be accessed if it were in ten pages! I thought about starting another ezine but decided that this blog was a better way to be interactive with readers. (Blogs didn’t exist back then… remember?)
And through it all, I’ve gotten closer to my father again. I’ve enjoyed his weirdness maybe more than ever before, certainly more than I did as a kid! I’ve felt his zest for life — not a little of which I inherited.
So here you are, Daddy! A new site and new energy for it.
Thank you very very much Rosana !
You have done a gone work there; interesting and important (!!) for all of us who have ‘references’ of I O M constantly present in mind. Because the best SF is ” serious business “; and Paul Myron has really something to teach of what happens TODAY !! True !!
In France we are seen a little too much ‘ intellectual’, but you can be proud your father is placed at the top of consideration since 1970’s ( another author is loved here : Ph. K. Dick !!…);
i would ask you to look for more witnesses, friends and colleagues of you father ( Universities, Army,..Australia..! ). It is said he lost his book-notes ‘somewhere’; it could be a good subject for a ‘treasure race’ !
Thanks, Phil! Regarding the notebook, CS scholar Dr. Alan Elms says there has never been a sign of it since it disappeared. Maybe a little time travel is needed…
“Paul Myron” is what my grandfather called himself. He too no doubt has things to say that are pertinent today, but I thought I would clarify that.
Always nice to hear from France. I have very happy memories of living there in the early 1960s, on a Stanford program. Except I never could pronounce “u”!