Re: [Paddlewise] Stove Oil

Chuck wrote:

> Tord, I'd like to hear the Steven King story, if you are talking 
about the
> author. I knew his agent, Kirby McCauley, slightly when the latter 
was just
> starting out. He was a fan of horror fiction from St. Paul who had 
looked up
> several of the old horror and fantasy authors who lived in the Twin 
Cities
> area. Then, one day, he told me he had decided to move to New York to 
become
> an author's agent. Big dream, I thought, but he did it. Sometime 
later he
> introduced me to SF author L. Sprague decamp and his wife Catherine 
at the
> World Science Fiction Convention. I've never met King, however.

OK: I'm interested in aerodynamics and aircraft, so I used to frequent 
a rec group
dedicated to some sort of aircraft,a long time ago.

Then, one day, I got an email in halting Swedish asking about aircraft 
fuel prices
in Sweden, signed Steven King.

Had no idea, but found out that aircraft fuel here is tax-free (after 
SAS having
threatened to move all refueling out of Sweden), and later found out 
that
'my' Steven wasn't Stephen at all, just a Bostonian bicycle fan, owning 
an
elderly Piper Comanche (which has by now made a few visits to Sweden).
Steven has been a programmer for various companies and banks, all over
the USA, including for Boeing in Seattle. Steven once flew into a small
Mid- West sleepy little city, where on the tarmac, when he rolled 
towards it
in his aircraft, there were maybe a thousand people, and an orchestra, 
on
a grand stand. Puzzled Steven asked who they were greeting, and
somebody said smilingly: 'You, of course; all here love your books!'

A hasty conversation ensued, and the crowd melted away quickly ...

My Steven used to be skipper on one of those big windjammers up in 
Maine, till he tired
of the whole thing, and switched to computer programming. He grew up in 
Maine, went,
for some time, to the same school as Stephen, but being slightly 
younger, not in the same class.
To avoid further mix ups he now calls himself Stefan (in line with his 
Swedish roots).

=====================

I used to be a member of TTS, the Tolkien Society of Sweden, and 
through that met
a few SF authors, both Swedish, English, and American, like the 
gentleman John Brunner,
and Paul Anderson, who mentioned that one of his best friends had been 
Malcolm X,
then recently killed, not the most common friend for a fat, old, white 
dude in those days :-)!

Never met JRR Tolkien himself (he hated fans), but did meet the first 
Swedish translator
of the LotR :-)!

A female friend, who used to study at Oxford, had problems one day, at 
lunch,
as there was no seats free at any of tables, but that of the infamous 
Professor Tolkien.
She had heard various stories about the professor, but when in Rome ...

She went up to his table, and asked, in purposely halting, English if 
the seat was
un-occupied, and he looked up, somewhat irritated, from his paper, 
muttered
something, and then looked at her squarely in the eye and asked her if 
she knew
who he was, and she said yes, and then he looked at her even more 
critically
and asked the even more pertinent question: 'Have you read any of my 
books?'
To this she had to confess that she hadn't, which he greeted with a 
smile, and
'Then you can take a seat!'. They had many nice lunches, sometimes 
together
with John's cronies, talking about a lot of subjects, but never about 
The Ring.

Tord

PS I have one L. Sprague de Camp book, his 'The Fallible Fiend' - love 
it!
About as short, and nice, as John Gardner's 'Grendel', which is about a 
similar
nasty creature. But otherwise quite different, of course.
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