Rosemary Kirstein

Damn, I’m never ready ahead of time!

Well.  It’s the wee hours of the morning, and I have to hit the road at a reasonable time, given that traffic around Boston is never smooth sailing.  My first event (Kaffeeklatsch) isn’t until 6PM, but I want to be settled and rested.  I’m slightly under the weather, possibly from fighting some sort of cold slowly creeping up on me…

Or possibly from a side effect of the meds for that unpleasant skin problem I mentioned a while back.  Which turned out to what TV commercials used to call “The heartbreak of psoriasis.”  More frustration than heartbreak on my part, actually, since it’s on the working surfaces of my hands, which I use daily for — oh, say, typing prose on a keyboard, or playing the guitar.  Both of which are necessary to keep me mentally stable.

I hope to arrive at the convention early enough to be non-frazzled, well-rested, and lightly fed before diving into my events.  And meeting and greeting!

Well, I really must get moving.  There’s plenty I want to say, now that I’m here saying things – but I’ve run out of time.

Hm, what can I say quickly?

How about another excerpt from the AMA Session?

“MikeOfThePalace” said: Hi Rosemary, and thanks for joining us!

First: something I particularly enjoyed was reading your books not only as a science guy, but as a science fiction guy. I felt like I could peer behind the curtain in a way that Rowan and Bel and company could not, saying to myself “the redgrass must have been generically engineered to do this” and “oh, the Face People have very high rates of stillbirth and infant mortality? Well, that makes perfect sense.” I suppose I don’t have a specific question about this topic, but take this as a general opportunity to comment.

Second question: you’re trapped on a deserted island with three books. Knowing that you will be reading them over and over and over again, what three do you bring?

ME: What’s interesting to me is that I’ve never considered the desert island question before, given that it’s a perennial question one asks of people.

Geez, what book? Thing is, the books that I love, I’ve already read them multiple times! I’d want a book that I wouldn’t otherwise read, and would take a long time to get through, and I’d have to puzzle it out, so I’d get a lot of mileage…

Aha! In Search of Lost Time by Proust. (Formerly known as Remembrance of Things Past) Yeah. That’ll keep me going for a while.

“JamesLatimer” commented: I’m glad they fixed the translation there. I’ve known the French title since hearing it in a Monty Python sketch and never got why it wasn’t the same in English!

ME: Much later: I just realized that I only named one book, and you asked for three!

So, on the same principle as In Search of Lost Time (something I wouldn’t normally have time to do, and would take work to understand, and would keep me busy for a while), I’d take .. Hm…

Well, I don’t have a specific title, but it would be a big fat textbook on mathematics, starting with algebra and going all the way to calculus. Because I would love to get really good at that.

And the third would be the book that professional musicians call the “official” Fake Book, which has lyrics and music for hundreds of songs, from the 40’s to the present. I would work out fascinating arrangements for songs I’ve never played before. You said nothing about me having a guitar along, but that’s okay. Like Gilligan’s Professor,  I can make do. I’ll use a stick, a coconut, and some fish guts to make a ukulele.