Monthly Archives: March 2018

The Next Good-Bye: Kate Wilhelm

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Farewell to Kate Wilhelm, who passed away Sunday. I wasn’t fortunate enough to be able to call her a friend, but I got to know her a bit through the Clarion Workshop while it was here at MSU, and I had tremendous respect for her as a writer and a teacher. I don’t know how visible Kate Wilhelm was from the hemisphere where most of fandom lives these days–I suspect she was below the horizon of too many of today’s fans–but she was a very bright star in science fiction’s firmament, and her passing leaves a hole in our sky.

Kate Wilhelm

(Photo by me, July 1990, at the Clarion Workshop. I have cropped a shirtless Damon Knight out of the frame.)

High Density

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Inertia dictates that all manner of objects will collect in the corners of one’s life. I’ve been in my office working on rebuilding my daughter’s desktop computer, and while looking for a particular installer CD I came across a shoebox holding some retail floppy disc boxes.

Two were partial boxes of virgin 5.25″ HD floppies. (HD=1.2MB – remember?)

One contained archival backups of several novels and assorted other early writings.

And two were stuffed full of empty 5.25″ sleeves from assorted brands. It must have made sense to me to have some in reserve so no floppy would ever go naked. But 40+? Inertia again, I suppose.

For the nostalgia value, here’s a photo with some familiar and some nearly forgotten names.