Family Matters

“Cyberpunk” has been much on my mind lately, or more accurately, in my face. I’ve received the usual batch of fall semester queries from students writing papers, a few more requests from various publishers seeking reprint and/or translation rights—one of which was worth taking seriously, so I did, and I’ll have more to say about that book when we get closer to the publication date—and one request from an incredibly dedicated fan who had turned up a nice clean copy of the November 1983 issue of Amazing Stories and wanted me to sign it, specifically in the white space at the top of page 94.

Oh. That means I have to look at page 94 again.

Here, for your reference, is what the top of page 94 looks like. Note the introduction that George Scithers wrote nearly 40 years ago for the original magazine publication of the story. Please read it closely.

And now, the story that some of you have heard or read before, but most probably have not. 

___________________________

I no longer remember the name of the con. It was somewhere around thirty years ago and I want to say it was a WorldCon, but I really don’t remember. What I do remember is that I was with a bunch of other mid-list, mid-life, and mid-career pros, we were in the professional SF/F writer’s natural habitat—the hotel bar—and we were having just a great old time, drinking heavily and swapping divorce horror stories. My first wife, Nancy, had just kicked me out, changed the locks, and filed for separation, and to be honest, I deserved it. In those days I was Bruce Bethke, Semi-Famous Science Fiction Writer, and I was a real jerk.

What struck me at the time was how casually everyone there took the news. It was as if it was a rite of passage, or an occupational requirement, or perhaps even a milestone on the road to success. “Okay, you’ve just sold your fifth novel. Time for your first divorce.” “Ha ha, SFWA: we put the fun in dysfunctional!” Ben Bova gave me a signed copy of his book, Survival Guide for the Suddenly Single. The then-editor of the SFWA Bulletin asked me to write an article on how to protect your intellectual property rights in a divorce. A certain editor who shall remain nameless, assuming I was broke and desperate for cash, tried to talk me into a book deal, ghostwriting for a certain well-known media personality who had a burning desire to see his name on the cover of an SF novel but no actual time to write, knowledge of writing, or discernible writing talent. It was a wonderful evening of back-slapping camaraderie.

Later, when I sobered up, it began to disturb me. It wasn’t just that being a writer seemed to be toxic to marriage and family: it was how readily the writers I knew (and at the time, being on the SFWA board of directors, I knew hundreds of successful writers) accepted this toxicity. I realized I could count on my fingers all the writers I knew who had intact first marriages and functional families. By and large my peers were women whose cats were their surrogate children; women who had had one or two children with male gametes supplied by one or more long-gone donors; men who would never get married and father children because they just didn’t swing that way; or worst of all, really successful male writers who had been married, but were now perfectly content to let their children be raised by their ex-wife’s next man. Or woman. Or whatever.

That’s when it struck me. The problem wasn’t that being a writer is somehow toxic to marriage and family. It was a matter of selection bias. My peer group was composed of divorced SF/F writers because we were all, every one of us, people who believed it was more important to our careers for us to be there, at that con, drinking with our fellow writers and editors in a hotel bar, than at home with our wives and families.

This, in turn, explained a nascent trend I at first thought I was only imagining I was seeing. The world of SF/F—at least, the social, con-going, dedicated fandom part of it—was not just family-neutral, but in the process of turning actively family-hostile. And the problem wasn’t just with passing trends in genre fiction, or the idiosyncrasies of the current batch of editors who bought it, or the greedy bastard publishers who printed it. The problem was the writers.

¤

It was too late to save my first marriage. The best I could hope for was to try to have a good post-marriage for the sake of my daughters. Later I remarried, and added a step-son and another son to the family. I worked—really worked—at being a good husband and father, and quit going to cons, unless I could go with my family. The last major con we went to was Dragon Con, and we went as a family.

Emily would have loved Dragon Con. She grew up to be a costumer, a crafter, and a devoted fan of all things Harry Potter. We lost Emily in late September of 2009—suddenly, from a natural cause that was undiagnosed, unpredictable, unpreventable, and apparently had been waiting years for the opportunity to kill her.

People often ask why I don’t try to put together a complete collection of all my short stories from the 1980s and 1990s. That photo at the top of this column is the reason. Whenever I try to do it, I get as far as the introduction George Scithers wrote for the original magazine publication of “Cyberpunk” and then I grind to a stop. Other people look at my publication credits and see a bunch of short stories, some of them pretty good, some Nebula-nominated, some even world famous. What I see is all the time I stole from my daughters’ childhoods and all the damage I did to my first marriage, chasing the mirage of being Bruce Bethke, Semi-Famous Science Fiction Writer.

¤

A few people know that in 2010, when we went to Dragon Con, it was between the time Karen (my second wife) was diagnosed with breast cancer and the first round of what’s turned out to be an eleven-year odyssey of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation treatments, and then more of the same. Karen has beaten the odds so far: when she was first diagnosed she was told to expect that she had two more years, five tops, and eleven years later she’s still here and still in the fight.

What even fewer people have known until recently is that in December of 2012, my first wife, Nancy, was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma. After a five-and-a-half year battle, she left this world in August of 2018.

For those of you who have asked why I don’t go to WorldCon anymore or why I really don’t give a crap about any of the many cat-fights and pissing contests that are forever going on inside the world of SF/F writing and fandom: seriously, are you kidding? You think that stuff is important?

¤

Thirty-eight years later, we know some of the answers to the questions George Scithers posed in his introduction to “Cyberpunk.” Nancy and Emily now sleep for eternity, side-by-side in a small churchyard cemetery in rural Minnesota.

As for me? You can’t fix yesterday. But you can learn from experience, and try to pass on what you have learned.

This was my experience. Learn from it.