Getting older

[avevale_intelligencer]

Those who point out with ill-concealed glee, as the lady quoted in this article did, that we older fans with our antiquated opinions and our nostalgic illusions and our horrible grey hair will soon all be dead, overlook the fact that by the same inexorable process, they will soon be our age. And I shall be very surprised if they do not also find that (regardless of their politics) they prefer the company of their friends to that of strangers, they tend to hold to the opinions to which their experience has led them, and they also wish the future that is staring them in the face were more like the simpler one they imagined when they were younger. That is, I should be surprised, except that I'll be dead.

And just on a general note, anyone who tells a person who is dealing with the manifold failures and inconveniences involved in growing old that they are not living in the real world deserves to be thoroughly beaten about the head with a walking stick. I am, as always, just saying.

Comments

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

*squish*

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

& well said.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

the manifold failures and inconveniences involved in growing old

A very good way of putting it.

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

Thank you. As this post is unlocked, I shall make its presence known elsewhere.

The article to which you refer irked me: I greatly enjoyed the inclusivity that I saw at Loncon 3, which far outweighed the occasional necessity to supress someone who was making rude remarks about people with a different outlook on life than them.

I'd like to think I'd have enjoyed Nine Worlds, but after reading that article I'm mot sure I'd have been welcome, being a fat, bearded, balding fifty something who reads books (my love of literary SF being kindled by watching Star Trek and in no way diminishing my love of SF in video or even music doubtless being irrelevant).

[michael cule (from livejournal.com)]

I ended up at a panel of the young bloods who had been nominated for the best website Hugo talking about their habit of writing about books. I couldn't get out (I was trapped in the middle of a row in a crowded room) so I fell asleep thinking: "These people are not nearly as important as they think they are..."

I am turning into a curmudgeon. Or perhaps that should be past tense.