Someone who saw my last post asked if I had ever actually met Manly Wade Wellman, to which I was proud to answer, “You bet.” As a matter of fact, I was the young writer referred to in the old Hellnotes essay, the one who received some words of encouragement during a brief break in an otherwise hectic World Fantasy Convention — New Haven, 1982, I think.

I was lucky enough to attend quite a few of the earlier WFCs, starting with the fifth, which was the first one to return to Providence, Rhode Island, the convention’s birthplace. One of the best things about those gatherings, besides the giddy enthusiasm they always instilled, the contact high that didn’t wear off for weeks afterwards, was the opportunity to rub shoulders, even just briefly, with some of the old pulp masters.

I remember chatting with Manly, getting autographs from the likes of Frank Belknap Long and J. Vernon Shea, and having a pleasant conversation with Robert Bloch while he patiently signed my inordinately large stack of books. I also had things signed by Hugh B. Cave, who years later subscribed to my magazine and years after that became a Hellnotes reader — how cool was that?

One day our group found itself in the buffet line with H. Warner Munn, who ended up sharing our table and regaling us with tales of writing “The Werewolf of Ponkert,” his memories of Lovecraft and his vast knowledge of the Roman Empire, the subject of his then-new historical novel, The Lost Legion.

One of the best memories of all was riding in an uncomfortable yellow school bus with 60 or 70 fans and one very special guest to the site of Poe’s grave, where the guest — the great Fritz Leiber — laid a wreath and provided a stunning, chill-inducing midnight reading of “The Conqueror Worm.” That trip was the subject of another early Hellnotes essay, which I would reprint here … except I can’t find it at the moment.

Those were good times, rare opportunities to meet a generation that even then was slipping away from us. For a few short moments, we actually got to mingle with the same giants whose shoulders we were trying so hard to stand upon.

They’re gone now, of course, but their ghosts linger and their books and stories remain a constant source of joy.

You never know what you’re going to find when you’re clicking here and there, cruising around the Internet.

The other day, I stumbled across this old essay of mine — one of the first pieces I did for Hellnotes, back in the earliest days, when Dave and I were still trying to figure out exactly what the newsletter was going to be. I hadn’t yet started writing weekly editorials. Instead, I was putting together semi-regular pieces like “The Roots of Horror,” trying to say a lot in a very few words, which has never been especially easy for me.

I remember writing the piece on Wellman and giving permission for it to be reused. I even remember seeing it not long after it had been posted. But I was a little bit startled to discover that it’s still out there, all these years later.

Re-reading the piece now makes me wish I’d said a few more things, or at least said these particular things a little better. But Manly Wade Wellman was a nice guy and a great writer, and I suppose nothing you say about people like that is ever really enough.

As for the Wellman tribute site itself, it seems to be in a “lingering” phase, without any recent updates. I hope it sticks around. Manly deserves all the ink — virtual and real — that he can get.

My unrequited love affair with the phantasmagorical typing device in the post below below got me thinking about the tools of the writer’s trade.

Three decades ago, when I was starting out, there seemed to be great fascination with writing implements. Almost every author profile contained a few obligatory questions about his or her preferred method of getting words down on paper. Do you use an electric typewriter? A manual? Do you still write your stories in longhand? Just a few years later, such questions became even more common, but now the goal was to find out which authors still hammered away on their IBM Selectrics and which had embraced the future by purchasing one of those newfangled computers – a “word processor,” as most of us called the hardware in those days. Writers who had taken the plunge were looked on with some measure of awe, but those who clung to older technologies were also admired, honored for being more concerned with their stories than the equipment used to tell them.

It might be my imagination, but it seems some of this interest has faded over the years, perhaps because it’s assumed that everyone now uses a computer – a state of the art something or other running some sort of topnotch software, most likely Microsoft Word. The loyal diehards who cling to their typewriters and pens are no longer viewed as dedicated pros. Quirky or downright strange is more like it.

The sad thing is, writers in years past often had great affection for their typewriters. They could talk at length about the ruggedness, reliability, ergonomic beauty, creative benefits and even the humorous eccentricities of their particular machines. They felt as if their typewriters were full partners in the lonely and difficult business of turning ideas into stories, and they spoke about them as such. Compare that to today. You almost never hear authors wax rhapsodic about their laptops. And why would they? Typewriters are distinct individuals with unique personalities. Computers are faceless, uniform drones, one the same as the next. Used one, used ‘em all. If you do happen to praise your computer, you’re more likely to talk about its speed, memory, hard drive size, graphics capability or utility as a video and mp3 player than its reliable but utterly unsurprising word-processing abilities.

Personally, I miss the typewriter I used back when I was starting out – an Olympia electric that looked exactly like this. It served me well through four early novels and countless short stories, poems and other bits of ephemera. She was a beauty, a workhorse and a friend. She spoke in a smooth and gentle purr that occasionally deepened into a sexy, throaty growl. She was sometimes demanding but never truly obstinate. She never missed a day of work, and when I was tempted to skip out, she would glare at me quietly until I sat down and got busy. I loved that machine with all my heart and still do, though she is long gone. I’ve never felt remotely the same about any of the many computers that followed in her wake.

I’m also one of those oddballs who loves fine pens and still likes to write early drafts in longhand, though I don’t do it nearly as much as I used to, thanks in large part to my “day job,” which requires me to spend many hours every week scribbling notes at meetings – sometimes as much as 20 pages of notes for a 60-minute city council session. After that, when it comes time to really write, longhand can feel frighteningly like drudge work.

Of course, nothing ever stays the same, does it? Nor should it. Such is the advance of progress, the march of time.

Still, it’s a melancholy feeling, this realization that we have gained so much … but lost so much along the way.

I want one of these:

Keyboard extraordinaire

No, seriously. I really, really want one.

If I had a keyboard like that, I surely could write the Great American Novel. Or perhaps, if I typed the right combination of keys at the right time of day, on the right day of the month, I would find a way to bridge the gulf of space and time, unravel the eternal mystery, and raise the spirits of H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. Together the five of us — me, Herb, Jules, Artie and the keyboard — would fly around the world in our fabulous airship and have all sorts of astonishing adventures.

Either way, pretty cool.