I am about to begin posting here a long essay, in eight sections. Written eleven years ago, it helped in a healing process.
Healing from what? Call it a writing injury, from overstrain.
A slowly composed, slowly revised piece, "The Events Leading Down to Biography: On Writing Kornbluth," will appear here much as it did in manuscript in late 2012, when I considered it finished. At present I prefer not to attempt re-tuning its voice to accord better with the voice, mood, or style that new writing from this pencil might reflect.
Yet at its conclusion I will add a separate, new note — not an additional section, since, those many years ago, I felt satisfied with the essay's closure. I still do.
Why publish it now, after all this time?
Though I have planned to do this for years, I have hesitated time and again: for to be my own editor would mean revisiting issues that remain emotional ones for me. Besides the fact that time does smooth over rough areas in our lives, however, two occasions prompt me to act on this at last.
One is that on the 14th of this month I will drive to Minneapolis to be Special Guest at Diversicon, a small, congenial science-fiction convention. The invitation came about because a pre-announced guest had to back out; and since a convention "ghost of honor" was Cyril Kornbluth, the convention committee, which had already contacted me about possibly attending, invited me to be that guest's replacement. I am ending my decade's absence from public events, in other words.
The second reason has to do with today's date. The Diversicon planners chose Cyril Kornbluth because he would have been a hundred years old this year. They also chose Gordon R. Dickson for the same reason. I requested that they consider adding Judith Merril, again for the same reason. This they did.
Today, as it happens — July 2, 2023 — Cyril would have reached one hundred. In common with his character Edward Royland in "Two Dooms," he was born July 2, 1923. (Judy, half-a-year older, was born January 21, 1923.)
In honor of the day's ghost, I give him this essay. Happy birthday, Cyril Kornbluth! Unless that ghost already has, only one person outside this house, here in Cashton, has read this essay. I will tell you about the circumstances in my after-note.
Cheers ...
P.S. — In checking my records after finishing the above, I was surprised to find that in 2014 I did send the essay to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. Plainly I forgot having ever sent it out post-2012. Since I never heard back, I assume the manuscript was lost.
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