Mabfan's Musings

At the start of a very, very busy long weekend for us, Nomi and I got a special treat.

Nomi Burstein, Bob Greenberger, Michael A. Burstein Photo copyright ©2011 A. Kaplan. All rights reserved.

Our good friend Bob Greenberger happened to be in town today, so Nomi and I arranged the time out of our work schedules to meet him for lunch at the Milk Street Café.

I've talked about Bob quite a bit on this blog before; he's a writer and editor who used to work for both DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and he's working on becoming a teacher. (He edited some of my favorite comics when I was a kid, long before I knew him.) He's also a local politician in his own town, so he and I sometimes compare notes on Town Meeting issues. Bob and I even collaborated on a story together once, "Things That Aren't," which appeared in Analog back in April 2007.

We literally have not seen Bob in person for a few years, as he lives in Connecticut. Often we would see him at the Malibu Diner in New York City when a group of editor types meet for lunch on a Wednesday (hence the title of this post), but we haven't been there for a while. We also haven't been to any conventions recently, which would have been another chance to spend time with him.

Today's lunch wasn't earth-shattering or anything like that; it was just a few good friends having a chance to catch up in person, as opposed to over the Internet. It was a chance to laugh, and smile, talk about our kids (I can say that now; last time I saw Bob I wasn't yet a father), and just reconnect.

Thanks, Bob.

Last evening, Nomi and I had dinner with Norman Cates.






We first met Norman two years ago at the 2004 World Science Fiction Convention, Noreascon 4. Norman was the official delegate for DUFF, or the Down Under Fan Fund, which raises money to send science fiction fan representatives between North America and Australia/New Zealand. Norman works at Weta, the company that did many of the special effects for the Lord of the Rings movies and King Kong. So he came to Worldcon both as the DUFF delegate and as a Weta representative.

(Side note: Norman made every set of elf ears that were in the three Lord of the Rings films. For some reason, people love to hear this.)

Being able to get to know Norman is one of the things I love about science fiction fandom. Back in 2004, we encountered him first between panels and then at some of the parties. As the convention was winding to an end, we invited him out to dinner later in the week, since he was going to be sticking around for a few days. So two years ago, we went to a local Chinese restaurant and just spent a few hours talking about all sorts of things -- science fiction, television, movies, international fandom, etc.

We hadn't really spoken to him much since then, just the occasional email. Then, last week, he emailed to say that Weta was sending him to a conference in Boston (the SIGGRAPH conference for anyone who's interested) and that he wanted to see us and to get together with fans. I managed to put him in touch with NESFA and Arisia folk, and we arranged to have dinner with him at Rubin's.

Even though it's been two years, it's like the time disappeared. We went right back to talking about science fiction, television, movies, international fandom, and many other such topics. We kept interrupting each other with tangents and digressions, and we spent a lot of time laughing.

After the conference is over, Norman will be traveling across the country to go to GenCon. What's funny is that almost every time he mentioned the name of the fans he would be seeing along the way, we responded by saying, "Oh, tell them we say hello." We all acknowledged that this is what it is to be a part of fandom.

I love being a part of this community.

Copyright © Michael Burstein; photo copyright © Nomi Burstein