The Mind Control Lasers Lied to Me

You would think that, since I don’t have a day job or kids at home, I’d be able to get lots of writing done, wouldn’t you? Yet here I am, turning out maybe fifteen-twenty pages in a good week. So what do I do with my time?

Well, eating, sleeping, housekeeping, web-surfing — all the obvious stuff. But I manage to find some more eccentric ways to put off work, as well.

Right now, for example, I’m in the middle of carefully editing a digital transfer of the Moody Blues’ “Seventh Sojourn” from LP to iTunes. This is an album I haven’t played in four or five years, but it suddenly seemed urgent to get it archived on my computer.

And I just wrote a letter to a bank to let them know that the guy they’re looking for at this address hasn’t lived here for at least five years. Anyone sensible would have just tossed their letter, instead of answering it.

Earlier I spent some time identifying a coverless old book I inherited, which turns out to be A.D. 2000, by Lieutenant Alvarado M. Fuller, published in 1890 — while I knew the title, the author’s name does not appear anywhere after the title page, which is missing from my copy. Now I’ve not only identified it, but was able to print out scans of the pages I was missing. Which was entertaining, but not very useful.

I also sorted a bunch of old manuscripts as part of an ongoing effort to tidy my office. This had me happily contemplating questions such as, “Do comic book scripts go with novels or short stories?” “Do I need to keep all the drafts of short stories?” “Did I really do that many rewrites of my scripts for Tekno*Comix? Well, at least they’re all dated, and therefore easy to sort.”

And of course, I’m writing this blog entry, instead of something that might make money.

So now you know why I’m still only a paragraph into Chapter Seven of The Sorcerer’s Widow.

As any comic book readers out there already know, last September DC Comics relaunched their entire superhero line as “the New 52,” starting classics like Action Comics over at #1, relaunching several canceled titles (e.g., Swamp Thing), and adding assorted new titles, such as Justice League Dark.

They’ve done big relaunches before — Crisis in 1986 was the first, then Zero Hour, and 52, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some.  This time, though, they wanted to not just clean up continuity, but to make real changes to several long-established characters, and according to their pitch at the San Diego Comic-Con, to try to get back to what had made the characters appealing in the first place.  They didn’t want everyone to just yawn and say, “Oh, look, they’re doing it again.”

So they cancelled every DC superhero title and started an entire new line, fifty-two titles launching with new #1 issues, some the same, some new.  The theory was that they would all start off fresh, so new readers could pick them up and not be lost in a maze of accumulated continuity.

It didn’t really work out that way, but that was the theory.

So the new Justice League #1, the alleged flagship, was the only DC title shipped the last Wednesday in August of 2011, and the other fifty-one all premiered in September of 2011.

Naturally, not all of the fifty-two succeeded; in fact, they recently announced the first round of cancellations, six of them.  They’ll be replaced with six new titles.  That prompted me to look at what I was reading, and whether I wanted to continue, and whether I wanted to pick up any of the six new ones.

I used to read a lot of DC and Marvel superhero titles, but in recent years I had dropped them all.  I didn’t like the big crossover events that the publishers staged more or less annually, so I made it a firm policy to drop any title where the regular ongoing storyline got mucked up by a big crossover event I wasn’t reading.

This meant that by the end of 2010 I was no longer reading a single Marvel title — I’m still not — and my DC reading was down to a handful of Vertigo titles and short-run oddities.

I figured this relaunch was a good place to jump back in, and see whether maybe they’d gotten it right this time.

Initially, I was pretty excited about the whole thing.  Oh, I wasn’t about to buy all fifty-two — I really hated some of the characters they were including — but I did pick fourteen of the fifty-two — more than a quarter of the total — and bought those.  I’ve also now read several of the other titles that friends had subscribed to, but this was my own list:

Action Comics
Detective Comics
Superman
Batman
Superboy
Supergirl
Batwoman
Catwoman
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
Blackhawks
Demon Knights
OMAC
Voodoo
Wonder Woman

OMAC and Blackhawks are among the six canceled titles that will end with #8.

Looking at the six new titles, I won’t be replacing them — none of the new six interest me at all.  In fact, rather than adding any, I’ll be dropping some others.  Haven’t decided on the exact list yet, but Superboy, Supergirl, Voodoo, Frankenstein, Demon Knights, and Catwoman are all at risk.  And I was considering dropping OMAC and Blackhawks anyway, though the decision has been taken out of my hands.

Of the titles I’ve read but didn’t subscribe to — Resurrection Man, Animal Man, Grifter, Swamp Thing, Batman and Robin, Justice League, Justice League Dark, etc. — I don’t intend to add any.

So I could be down to six.  Out of fifty-two.  This isn’t very impressive.  So what went wrong?

I really liked several of the first issues I got, but here’s a title-by-title account of what’s gone wrong (or hasn’t):

Action Comics:  The idea here is that this is filling in some backstory on Superman, showing us how he got established in this new version of the story, while Superman is set in “present day” Metropolis, where he’s more of a known quantity.  Eventually, Action is supposed to catch up and they’ll more or less merge.

I loved the first issue, where he’s not called “Superman” yet, he’s wearing blue jeans instead of tights, etc.  Unfortunately, a few issues in the storyline started getting much less linear and became harder to follow.  I’m sticking with it, but I’ve lost some of my enthusiasm.

Detective Comics:  It’s Batman.  They really didn’t change much from what was going on before the relaunch.  It’s dark and violent.  I like it.  It isn’t especially innovative or anything, but it’s good, solid Batman stories, and I like those.

Superman:  Superman is still relatively new in Metropolis here, but he’s accepted as the city’s hero, battling alien menaces, etc.  I’m content with it, not thrilled.

Batman:  Not as good as Detective, but serviceable Batman stories.

Superboy:  This one started out great.  The current version of Superboy, for those of you who haven’t looked at any comics lately, is a partially-successful attempt to clone Superman.  They couldn’t get completely Kryptonian DNA to work, so they used a mix of human and Kryptonian, and the result is something new.

The first issue has him waking up in a big test tube while his creators debate what to do with him.  He’s something of a blank slate.  This is cool.  Lots of things you can do with that.  There’s a subtle inclusion of a character from Gen 13 that I didn’t pick up on at first.  (I hadn’t realized DC now had the rights to Gen 13.)

Unfortunately, the whole thing started downhill with the second issue.  They aren’t doing what I wanted to see.  I realize that’s maybe my problem, not theirs; I also realize that sometimes authors come up with something better than what I wanted or expected.  In this case, though, I don’t think that’s what happened.

As Julie puts it, Superboy has yet to develop a personality.  He does have some (justifiable) feeling of persecution, and he’s a bit whiny, but there’s nothing interesting there.

Also, see Systemic Problems #1 and #2 below.  They both apply here.

Supergirl:  Great set-up — Kara Zor-El remembers getting ready for her high school graduation (or the Kryptonian equivalent), and then next thing she knows she’s waking up in a crashed rocketship in Siberia, on a planet she’s never heard of where the only person who speaks Kryptonian is some guy who claims to be her baby cousin Kal-El all grown up.  Wonderful start.

Unfortunately, since then the story has her flailing about wildly and refusing to listen to explanations or ask sensible questions.  Oddly, one of my complaints here is that Systemic Problem #1 does not really apply — she’s fighting villains while she still has no idea what’s going on.  And there’s Systemic Problem #1a.

This one may still be salvageable, though.

Batwoman:  Beautiful art, pretty good story, but it’s picked up from the old continuity with no changes at all, so it hasn’t always been easy to follow, and a new reader may not get who some of the characters are.  Still, I’m enjoying it so far.

Catwoman:  They introduced a cool new supporting character, then promptly killed her off, and many readers aren’t happy with the depiction of Batman’s relationship with Catwoman, but I’m okay with this.  Not blown away, but it’s not bad.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.:  This is apparently picking up continuity from some title I never read.  Frankenstein’s monster is working as an agent for a secret organization called SHADE that battles menaces threatening the world.  Cool.  Some of the other agents he works with are also cool (and apparently from one of the various “Creature Commando” series, none of which I ever read).

Unfortunately, the writer seems to think readers want action, action, action.  I’d much rather get some background on what’s going on, see conflicts develop over time, etc.  Systemic Problem #1a and #2 are both very much in evidence.  (#1, not so much.)

Blackhawks:  The Blackhawks are a super-high-tech organization based in central Asia fighting various menaces, but Systemic Problem #2 is huge here.

Demon Knights:  All DC’s magical medieval characters team up to battle supernatural menaces.  Cool.  Except that we get absolutely no introduction to any of them; we’re just thrown into the middle of it as they find themselves trying to fight off a huge army besieging a village.  I don’t know who half these people are, or why I should care about them.  After six issues, we’re still in the middle of that first battle.

OMAC:  Someone clearly adores 1970s-vintage Jack Kirby.  Unfortunately, Systemic Problem #1 and #2 undercut the whole thing.

Voodoo:  Voodoo is the stage name of a shape-shifting alien spy working as a stripper.  Five issues in, it’s not yet clear whether she’s the hero of the series, or the villain.  I think she’s supposed to turn into a hero.  She hasn’t yet.

Wonder Woman:  The premise here is that the Greek gods are not the anachronisms we’ve seen them portrayed as in the past.  They’ve kept up to date.  And they’re still the ruthless, petty, vengeful, inhuman bastards they were in Greek myths.  Zeus is still screwing anyone and anything that catches his eye, and Hera is still royally pissed about it.  Diana, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, is caught up in their intrigues.

This mostly works for me — except when the story goes to Paradise Island.  I like some of what the writer’s done with that background (I’m trying not to spoil anything here), but the scenes actually set there just bored or confused me.

So, about those systemic problems…

The first systemic problem:  These are superheroes, right?  Heroes?  People who do good deeds?  Who fight villains, and protect innocents?  That’s the whole underlying concept, isn’t it?

Couldn’t prove it by me, after reading most of these comics.  Oh, Batman is still doing his job, tracking down homicidal freaks, and Wonder Woman is trying to protect innocents, but a lot of these people seem to be fighting themselves or (systemic problem #1a) each other, rather than bad guys.  We have yet to see Superboy or Supergirl do anything that wasn’t based on their own self-interest; OMAC is thrust into battle against his will by Brother Eye, whose motives are unclear.  We’ve seen Superboy fight Supergirl, Frankenstein fight OMAC — why?  Aren’t they all supposed to be good guys?

Maybe I’m hopelessly old-fashioned, but I’d like to see some of these superheroes fighting bank robbers, or saving people from tornadoes, or other such old-time heroics.  Most of these characters have no grounding in anything remotely like the real world, and give us no reason to care about them.

The second systemic problem:  What the heck is it with the DC universe being overrun with super-high-tech clandestine organizations?  There seem to be dozens of them — SHADE, Checkmate, NOWHERE, Blackhawks, Cadmus, etc.  What’s more, they seem to be fighting each other more than they’re combating any obvious evils; the idea that they might all be on the same side doesn’t seem to ever occur to anyone.  When NOWHERE goes up against Checkmate, which side am I supposed to cheer for?  Why would I care?

I loved the original Blackhawks, who were a team of heroic aviators.  The Blackhawks in the title that’s being cancelled aren’t a team, they’re a bureaucracy.

And finally, to sum up:  There’s a depressing sameness to most of these comics.  Nothing stands out as fresh or witty or touching.  Except for Superman and the Batman titles, they seem to exist in a realm where super-powered beings defend themselves from other super-powered beings and ordinary people either don’t exist at all, or are relegated to the distant background.

I don’t care about super-powered beings; I care about people, and there are damned few of those in these stories.

So I’ll be cutting my list, and regretting that DC blew their chance to do this relaunch right.

I’ve recently gotten back the rights to some of my older work, and am in the process of putting it back in print, either through Wildside Press or self-published.

The first of these old novels to see print anew is Touched by the Gods, which is now available in e-book form from Smashwords. It should be on Amazon and Barnes & Noble soon, with other outlets following in a week or two. A new trade paperback edition is planned, as well.

Since I wasn’t especially impressed with the terms offered by interested publishers, I’ve decided to take a plunge into the brave new world of the web. I’m self-publishing my latest novel.

One-Eyed Jack straddles the line between urban fantasy and horror. One of Gregory Kraft’s high school teachers meddled in what she thought was witchcraft, and cursed a handful of her students. From there, matters got worse.

The survivors still suffer from her spells. For Greg, that curse took the form of the ability to see the ghosts and monsters around us by night. He’s afflicted with prophetic dreams as well.

In one such dream he sees a lonely, emotionally-abused boy named Jack who has been befriended by a hungry ghost that calls itself Jenny — a ghost whose only food is human children. Jack has been appeasing the ghost with parts of himself, but he can only give up so much. He needs to find her another source of food.

Jack knows there are other desperate children…

As mentioned, Greg can see the monsters, but ordinarily he can’t affect them. He can’t stop them. This time, though, he’s determined to stop Jenny — but how?

The trade paperback edition is $14.98.

The Kindle edition is $5.99.

The NookBook (ePub) edition and Smashwords edition are also $5.99.

The trade paperback edition should be available from Amazon soon, and I believe it can be special ordered by traditional outlets — the ISBN is 9781466291539. (It’s possible it isn’t available to them yet, but, as with Amazon, it should be soon.)

Check it. Hope you like it.

In theory, I’m currently writing a YA fantasy novel called Graveyard Girl, about fifteen-year-old Emily Macomber, who inherits a rather unpleasant psychic ability. I have 14,000 words of a planned 65-75,000 written. My wife and agent are both enthused about it, and I admit it’s probably going to be a good story, but it hasn’t really taken off yet. Partly, I think the high expectations are discouraging me.

At any rate, after almost two months of very slow progress, I decided that maybe if I had multiple projects going (as I often do), then I would at least get something done, even if it’s not whipping through the rest of Graveyard Girl. Rather than start yet another new project, though, I decided to pull out some I’d started previously. So I went looking through my “works in progress” folder, which has a few hundred projects in it in various stages of development, and pulled out some I thought were promising.

Well… that’s not quite all of the truth. I also started some new ones. My trip to San Diego for the Comic-Con spurred some ideas, and I indulged myself a little. There’s also one project that was prompted by an editor’s remark on what he was looking for.

So I’ve now written the first draft of an all-new Christmas story with the working title “Best Present Ever,” and scribbled an outline for Crosstime Charlie and the Helium Barons, and written the opening of an untitled mystery starring a guy who calls himself Bob, who only investigates murders the cops say weren’t murder. That’s the new stuff. (I’m not counting the two story ideas that never got past quick notes.)

And the old stuff — I was pleasantly surprised, looking at some of these. I think they’re pretty good, and I’m looking forward to working on them.

There’s The Dragon’s Price, a good old-fashioned fantasy, first in a series called “Signs of Power,” about Malborn Knightsbane, who was born with the magical ability to reshape his own flesh under certain circumstances. I have 16,000 words of an estimated 150,000.

There’s Tom Derringer and the Aluminum Airship, which was originally intended to be a YA steampunk novel to cash in on the trend, but which mutated into something else. I have 27,000 words of a planned 75,000.

There’s On A Field Sable, continuing the series begun in A Young Man Without Magic and Above His Proper Station. The viewpoint character isn’t Anrel Murau, though; it’s Mareet Saruis, who did not appear in the first two novels, though her father’s name was mentioned. Anrel has a small role. I have 41,000 words, a detailed outline, and extensive notes; I think it’ll run about 150,000 words.

And then there’s Ethshar — I’ve worked recently on Ishta’s Playmate and The Sorcerer’s Widow, but neither of them has gotten all that far yet.

Most of these older projects were put aside as not what the market wanted, but at this point, my attitude is, “Screw the market.” I’ll write what I please, and if no one in New York wants it, there are small presses that will, or if worse comes to worst, I can self-publish.

But I don’t know which of these, if any, I’ll actually finish. We’ll see.

I’m trying to adapt to the changed realities of the publishing business. While I’m certainly not giving up on traditional publishing — I have a novel out to market right now, and am working on another intended for a major publisher — I’m also putting some real effort into getting my backlist out there in e-book form, and in doing some of my own promotion. It’s also entirely possible that I’ll be publishing new stuff through the small press (mostly Wildside Press and FoxAcre Press) and self-publishing (under the name Misenchanted Press).

This means that instead of having a new novel to announce once or twice a year, I have a bunch of small projects working their way through various pipelines that I want people to know about.

I’ve therefore decided to attempt something many authors have been doing pretty much since the introduction of e-mail — a newsletter. So far it has the inspiring, stunningly original name “Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Newsletter,” and I’ve sent out two installments a week apart. I know I don’t like being barraged with promotional material, so I’ve decided that it will go out only when there’s something to report, and no more than once a week unless I need to make a correction to something that was in error or has changed.

If you’d like to receive this newsletter, e-mail me at lwe@sff.net and let me know, and I’ll add you to the list. I also have a second list — people who only want to receive it when there’s news about Ethshar — and you can sign up for that instead, if you want. (It’s the same newsletter either way, it’s just that the Ethshar list won’t get some issues.) If you sign up now, you won’t receive an issue until at least Lammas — i.e., August 2 — so if you don’t hear anything back, don’t worry right away.

If you’re already getting it and have any comments, this would be a good place to make them. I’d be happy to have some feedback, and discuss possible improvements.

Meanwhile, here are some of the projects in the pipeline:

The Final Folly of Captain Dancy and Other Pseudo-Historical Fantasies is a collection of four old stories, published by FoxAcre, available for the Kindle, and with a paper edition now available from Barnes & Noble. (Why Amazon doesn’t have the paper edition and B&N doesn’t have the e-book yet I don’t really know.)

How to Prosper During the Coming Zombie Apocalypse, by Nathan Archer, is a 6,000-word bit of silliness available only as a 99c e-book.

In the Blood collects all my vampire stories to date — twelve of them. Originally I was only planning an e-book, but on a whim I added a paper edition from Lulu.com.

Tales of Ethshar will be a collection of the eleven short pieces of Ethshar fiction I’ve written to date. It’s been accepted at Wildside, but contracts aren’t signed yet.

Split Heirs, the humorous fantasy novel I wrote with Esther Friesner, has been accepted for reprinting and publication in e-book form by Wildside Press. Again, no contracts or other details yet.

The Unwelcome Warlock is scheduled for September publication, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s pushed back a month or two.

And I think that’s all for now.

Over the past thirty-plus years, I’ve had well over a hundred short stories published in a wide variety of venues. Some, like “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers,” which won a couple of awards, are well-known and pretty easy to find; others, like “Corners in Time,” are utterly obscure.

I’ve decided that the new ease of publishing backlist can be put to use digging out all my old stories and making them available to new readers — for a reasonable price, of course.

I’m planning to try various approaches to see which works best, and one of my first experiments (by way of FoxAcre Press) is now available for the Kindle: The Final Folly of Captain Dancy and Other Pseudo-Historical Fantasies. A paper edition is in the works.

This mini-collection contains four stories. The title piece, my only novella to date, is a seafaring fantasy adventure set in a version of the eighteenth or the nineteenth century that isn’t quite the one our ancestors lived through. Also included: “My Mother and I Go Shopping,” previously published in Adventures in the Twilight Zone; “One Million Lightbulbs,” from Coney Island Wonder Stories; and “Windwagon Smith and the Martians,” first published in Asimov’s and reprinted a few places since.

“My Mother and I Go Shopping” wanders back and forth through time, space, and Faerie. “One Million Lightbulbs” is set in Coney Island’s glory days circa 1905. “Windwagon Smith and the Martians” combines 1854 Missouri with Ray Bradbury’s Mars (used with Mr. Bradbury’s kind permission).

That’s all the pseudo-historical fantasies I could remember writing.

Other small collections I have planned: In the Blood, collecting all my vampire stories; Herding Cats, with all my cat stories; Unicornucopia & Other Stories of Hooves and Horns, which will contain all my unicorn stories and may also get a centaur or two; and Tales of Ethshar, which will collect all the short Ethshar stuff, including the Christmas story and the April Fool’s gag. I expect Tales of Ethshar to be a Wildside Press book.

Beyond those, I don’t know yet. Any suggestions?

I’m also considering publishing individual short stories as e-books — thought I’d start with “Heart of Stone” (previously published in Graven Images). Anything anyone especially wants to see? Any other suggestions?

As some of you may have noticed, right now YA (”Young Adult”) science fiction and fantasy are selling huge numbers, while adult SF and fantasy are not. It has been pointed out to me by various people (including my agent) that this isn’t because of some huge demographic bulge of teenage readers, but because in recent years adult readers have been buying YA books for their own entertainment, in preference to the books nominally aimed at them.

Why?

Apparently, it’s because YA novels have likeable protagonists and straightforward plots. Also, they aren’t all sweetness and light, by any means, but they tend to be fairly positive in outlook.

In short, if what you’re after is escapist entertainment, you’re more likely to find it in a YA novel than in the latest adult release.

I’m cool with that.

And it occurs to me that this reflects the latest front in a war that’s been going on intermittently in the SF/fantasy field since at least 1939, and arguably longer — the battle between those who want science fiction to be respectable literature, and those who don’t give a damn about that, but they want it to be fun.

This conflict was presented most openly in the 1960s and ’70s, when the two sides were labeled the New Wave and the Old Wave — said labels being created, obviously, by the New Wave advocates. The New Wave folks dismissed traditional science fiction as simplistic, poorly-written adventure stories, and wanted to bring on a Golden Age of brilliant writing and literary experimentation in SF.

It goes back further, though. John W. Campbell became a revered icon in the SF field by insisting that his writers actually be able to write competently, and that their science have some basis in reality — in short, he was taking the “respectable literature” side and setting Astounding up in opposition to the pure escapist pulps like Planet Stories.

Some people argue that Campbell’s big innovation wasn’t better writing, just better science. These people should go look at back issues of Startling Stories, and remember that Campbell was perfectly happy to edit the pure fantasy of Unknown, so long as the writing was decent and the stories made sense.

Anyway, Campbell won out over the trashy pulps, and the New Wave more or less won out over the Old Wave — but I think the rise of YA now is a counter-revolutionary movement by readers. They want stories they can enjoy without too much effort. They want to experience the escapist pleasures they found when they first discovered SF and fantasy as teenagers — so they’re buying books aimed at teenagers.

It’s a theory, anyway.

There are times I feel a bit like a dinosaur, wondering what all these furry little bastards running around underfoot are up to, and where’d all the food go.

I’m not speaking about life in general; I’m doing okay at keeping up with the world, even if I still don’t have a smartphone or iPad.  I’m talking about writing for a living.

For about thirty years, I thought I had a handle on it.  I wrote novels, and publishers in New York bought them and paid me reasonable advances, and everything went pretty smoothly.  There were a few disappointments along the way, when a story I wanted to tell didn’t sell, or a series got dropped, or whatever, but I made a living at it, and was generally pretty happy with my situation.  I made adjustments to suit the market, but wrote more or less what I wanted to write.  I did some experimenting now and then, but my bread and butter was always the fantasy novel.  I spent fifteen years writing primarily for Del Rey Books, then switched to Tor for the next fifteen or so.

Then a couple of years ago, Tor declined to make an offer on the third and fourth books in the “Fall of the Sorcerers” series.  No big deal, I thought; I’ll just switch to another publisher again.

Except so far, other publishers don’t seem to be interested.  I keep hearing about all the wonderful new ways to get rich as a writer — paranormal romances, steampunk, urban fantasy, straight-to-ebook self-publishing, etc. — and can’t see how to make them work for me.

I don’t think it’s just me, either.  I seem to remember that back in the 20th century, the annual summaries in Locus would report about 1,400 new titles being published annually in SF, fantasy, and horror; well, for 2010 they reported 508.  (They don’t count small press or self-published titles.)  The book market seems to have undergone a massive contraction — not necessarily in total sales, but in number of titles in the genre.

So these things happen.  I’m not going to try to keep the buggy-whip factory running when everyone’s driving Fords.  My wife’s grandfather was trained as a blacksmith, but became an auto mechanic when blacksmithing dried up; my own grandfather was a carpenter’s mate on a tea clipper, but realized that was a doomed occupation and put himself through engineering school.  One must change with the times.

But I can’t figure out what to change to.

I was told urban fantasy was a hot genre, so I wrote an urban fantasy.  It hasn’t sold — it’s too emotionally cool, I’m told, and male protagonists don’t sell unless they’re named Harry Dresden.

All these damned mammals underfoot…

I have a beard, as anyone who’s met me or seen my picture probably knows. I’ve had it a long, long time.

I started out with just a mustache — and when I say “started out,” I mean I have literally never shaved my upper lip (though it was once, and only once, shaved for me), so by the time I graduated from high school I had a mustache.

That was 1972.

I got kicked out of Princeton in February, 1974, and that was when I grew a beard — a Van Dyke.

Then when I dropped out in 1977, I stopped shaving entirely and grew a full beard. I eventually started shaving again when my neck got excessively fuzzy, but I still have a full beard, and except for two brief interruptions I’ve had it since 1977.

I used to have long hair. I started growing it out in 1969. It got cut back somewhat a couple of times, but basically stayed long until 1984, when I cut it for my youngest sister’s wedding, and so Kyrith, who was then a baby, would stop grabbing and pulling it.

I kept it short for a few years, and honestly, I don’t remember exactly when I grew it back out, but it was long (below my shoulders) through most of the 1990s and well into the 21st century. In 2008, though — I think it was 2008, might have been a year or two earlier — I saw a picture of the back of my head and realized I had a bald spot, and that, combined with the long hair, had me looking uncomfortably like Riff Raff from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” So that October I cut it short, and it’s been fairly short ever since.

There were other variations along the way, such as color, but we won’t go into that right now — the basics, long hair and full beard, were pretty much as described above.

And here’s the weird thing: People don’t see this.

The first time I encountered this was when I was readmitted to Princeton in the fall of 1975. People who hadn’t seen me since February of ‘74 got to see me with my new beard.

Some people didn’t notice. Some saw that there was something different about me, but couldn’t place it exactly. The strangest was the girl who exclaimed, “You cut your hair!”

I pointed out that no, I hadn’t, my hair was still halfway down my back, but I’d grown a beard. She stared and said, “Didn’t you always have a beard?”

I never did convince her that I hadn’t.

Then at my sister’s wedding in 1984, nobody noticed that I had cut my hair, that it was at least eight inches shorter than before. I mean, nobody noticed. No one. When I finally mentioned it to someone, he asked, “Didn’t you cut it back in 1972?”

He’d seen me several times between 1972 and 1984. It was long every time.

I mentioned two interruptions in my beard. One of them was when I sold my beard to Gillette, for research, and there aren’t any odd stories about that, but the other one, well, one morning I just decided to experiment, and shaved half of it off, trimming it back down to the old Van Dyke.

No one noticed. It was like the wedding, except that this time even my own kids didn’t notice anything. So I grew the full beard back, because why bother maintaining the trim if nobody notices?

And I bring this all up now because at Capricon last month, someone I hadn’t seen for a few years saw me and exclaimed, “You grew a beard!”

She had never, ever seen me without a full beard. The actual difference was that I’d cut my hair since she last saw me. Well, that, and I’ve gone mostly gray.

But she saw a difference, and somehow that became I’d grown a beard.

I find this phenomenon baffling.