The Hurtling Moons Of Barsoom

1978 was an interesting year. Star Wars came out the previous year... and was still showing at the TriplePlex at the mall in the town where my grandparents lived. I spent the summer with my grandparents while I went to summer school.

I grew up way out in the sticks. We did have a theatre, but the manager was so cheap, he wouldn't show movies until they'd been out a couple of years; they were cheaper that way. I was so hot to see Star Wars, it was pathetic.

The Sci-Fi Summer Blockbuster was still a very new thing, and no one seemed to know what to do with it. Tie-ins, merchandising, toys, and everything was still kind of blundering around; NO one had expected the kind of mass social frenzy that Star Wars seemed to kick off. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious why it did well, but at the time... well... jeez, NOTHING had ever done that well!

I was thirteen that year, and I had it bad. It was a sci-fi summer, for me, and I made the most of it. Tickets for the afternoon showings of Star Wars were only a buck, and I must have seen that movie fifty times that summer, with my friends, or alone. Again and again. We got to the point where we could spout the dialogue a split-second ahead of the actors, all the way through the movie. It was great. There had NEVER been anything like Star Wars before.

When I wasn't at the movies, I was reading more sci-fi. Y'see, the little bitty cow town I grew up in was a bit short of books. The school libraries were small, as befit the tiny school, and there WAS no public library. In short, if you wanted to read something that wasn't a Harlequin Romance or written by Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour, you were out of luck. My head was FULL of spaceships, robots, and intelligent shades of the color blue that summer. I'd been fond of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian fantasies, and I reread them all... I discovered Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" that summer... I encountered Larry Niven's Ringworld that summer...

...and I learned about reality that summer.

Reality came in the form of my grandfather, a big, broad-shouldered Irishman who looked more than a little like John Wayne. He had barely finished high school before marrying his sweetheart and going to work for the railroads, which at the time was a whole world of career opportunities for a poor man at the time, and he'd made the most of it. He was a firm believer in hard work, good connections, big bucks, and the American Way.

He hated Star Wars.

"Why the hell are you wasting your time with all this crap?" he'd ask me, upon seeing me thumbing through the comic book adaptation for the umpty-third time. "What good is all this nonsense? Buncha damn fairy tales, is what it is. If you have to be reading books all the time, why can't you at least read something worthwhile?"

I looked back at him over my book. "Like what?"

"Something that isn't a buncha garbage. None of this stuff ever actually happened. Buncha made-up nonsense."

"Could you be a little more specific? Name a book you thought was worthwhile," I said. I found his attitude irritating, sure -- nobody likes to be told that what you enjoy is a ripe steaming load -- but there's a limit as to how rude you can get with your grandfather. There was a phrase called "back talk" in those days that basically meant that anything other than "yes-sir-no-sir" could be construed as insolence, if the elder chose to view it that way.

"Well," he replied, thinking back. I think it had actually been quite some time since he'd read a whole book. "Gone With The Wind, now. That was a heckuva story."

"Gone With The Wind never happened, either, Grampa. Margaret Mitchell just made it all up. Pure fiction."

"Yeah, yeah," he waved his hand, irritatedly. "I know that. But it could have happened. It was based on real events, real places, people, and things. Not like that garbage," he said, pointing at I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.

"What's the difference, Grandpa?" I said. "You're talking about a story that might have happened last century. I'm reading one that might have happened a century from now. They're both fiction, both just made-up stories. What's the difference?"

We never settled that point. It basically boiled down to the idea that any fiction taking place in a time before last Christmas was inherently superior to any fiction taking place in any setting other than Now or The Past... and when I asked him why, he'd get irritated with me. When I tried to defend my position, he'd get irritated with me.

...and it made me nuts. I knew that stuff like A Warlord Of Mars was pulp trash... but it was fun pulp trash... and I failed to understand why it was any trashier than Tarzan Of The Apes, which was frankly equally unlikely, written around the same time, more or less, and by the same guy!

Well... because Grandpa said so.

I shooda kept my mouth shut, but didn't. I debated with my grandfather. I argued that I, Robot was no less worthwhile literature than anything Louis LaMour ever wrote, and was arguably better. I challenged him to point out why Star Wars was any less worthwhile than The Alamo or Cahill, U.S. Marshall. He was a BIG John Wayne fan -- "He makes damn fine movies, and he's a great American," and he didn't much like at ALL the idea of his teenage grandson calling into question the value of stuff HE liked.

...and finally, he shut me down with a comeback that was older than either of us. "Sonny," he growled, "if you're so damn smart, why ain't you rich?"

I couldn't touch him there. It was his last bastion, his last fallback. He owned a house, some cars, some property. He had raised a family, and served his country during World War II. He had demonstrated his value to society, and the quality of his judgment. What had I ever done, that anyone should listen to me?

He had me. I could argue rings around him, but once he retreated into that particular bastion, the only argument I could use would be: And I should agree that you're totally right about everything, just because you're old and you've worked in a blue-collar job for thirty years?

...but that would have been stepping across the line into genuine insolence... and I knew better than that. So I shut the hell up and went back to my books. He continued to bug me about it. I ignored him as best I could. It was actually a learning experience -- I learned, that summer, that pestering someone endlessly about something doesn't necessarily change their minds… but it might just firmly convince them that you are a shithead.I was in the process of Becoming Who I Am, that summer, and my grandfather never let up.

Grandpa had a work ethic that would have shamed Cotton Mather. He enjoyed his weekends, but he worked like hell all week, too... and it bugged him to no end that I was all of thirteen, able-bodied, and unemployed. "You know, I could find you a little job, round the corner at the market. I know some people..."

I didn't want a job. I was going to summer school all day, I was spending my afternoons in air-conditioned splendor, making the regular 3:30 jump to hyperspace with Han and Chewie, and I was getting a weekly allowance mailed to me by my folks. What the heck did I want a job for? Hell, when did I have TIME for a job?

I tried talking to him about it. I think I've already made clear what discussion was like with the man. "Well... well, hell, son, what the heck GOOD are you if you don't have a job?" he finally growled, exasperated. In his mind, if you didn't have a job, there was something wrong with you -- you were lazy, or even a bum! Whether or not you needed the money, or felt like working was quite irrelevant -- "unemployment" to him was like "nakedness" -- something that happened occasionally, but only briefly, frantically covered up, and certainly never PUBLIC!

My grandfather and I kind of demolished our relationship with each other that summer. Before then, we'd never spent more than a week in the same house, and I'd been a child. Before, it had been easy for us to fall into the roles of Adored Grandpapa and Eldest Grandchild...

… but we spent enough time together in the summer of 1978 that we discovered we had next to nothing in common, and … well, we just didn't much like each other. He never let up bugging me about reading trash and about getting a damn job. At one point, in July, he started in on me about how he knew a fellow who'd take me on as a junior crew member, and I snapped back, "Grandpa, school's out in three weeks. I'm going home in THREE WEEKS! You want me to go out and get a job I don't need and don't want with some guy for THREE WEEKS?"

Grandpa looked at me, a little startled. "Well, HE doesn't need to know you're only going to be there three weeks," he replied.

The money was irrelevant. Grandpa simply could not like or respect anyone who so willfully remained unemployed at the manly age of thirteen.

Finally, the time came to go home. I packed my stuff. I'd accumulated quite a bit in my couple of months with the grandparents -- a LOT of sci-fi paperbacks, a few comics, and suchlike. They had… bookstores… in the big city, as opposed to the tiny li'l town where I grew up…

My grandfather looked upon my treasures... and pronounced them crap.

And what was worse, he said, was that I could have had three times as much crap if I'd been willing to go out and work for it, instead of sitting on my butt and just going to school (I kinda got the idea he didn't much approve of all this schooling, either, but he knew better than to say that).

"A whole summer," he muttered. "Spent a whole summer just goin' to school, and watchin' Star Wars over and over, and readin' crap. You coulda been out there makin' something out of yourself, boy, and gettin' paid for it. Instead you spent it all on crap, and didn't do nothin, and didn't make nothin', and didn't be nothin'. You'll never get rich at this rate."

...and again, I said nothing. It seemed preferable to saying something like, "Gee, you miserable old sonofabitch, I'd have gotten six jobs and sold myself into slavery to boot if I thought it would have kept your damn dentures together, but I know you well enough to know you'd just find something else to bitch about." Insolence to one's elders, after all, was just not acceptable.

Regardless of how big a shithead one's elder insisted on being.

I'd gone from "First and Eldest Grandchild" to "lazy bum" in one summer, in my grandfather's eyes. Even though I didn't agree with him, I still felt bad about it. It still hurt. That same year, I wound up getting an after-school job in the fall, so's to have some extra steppin-out money, and Grandpa crowed about that, when he heard about it that Christmas. "Finally! Got a job, did you? Finally felt the need of two coins to rub together? Gonna make somethin' of yourself? Gonna spend it all on rockets and paperbacks and spaceship movies? You'll never get rich that way!"

Grandpa died a while back. I'm still younger now than he was, when we shared that weird summer of 1978, but I'd like to think I'm doing pretty well, for a fool with a headful of rocketships and robots. I finished school. I've raised a family. I've made some money. I still haven't served my country in a world war, but I rest assured in the certainty that there will be one as soon as the politicians can comfortably arrange it, although I imagine I'll be too old for it when it finally gets here.

...am I rich, though? Good question. Grandpa died owning quite a bit -- he was a firm believer in "whoever dies with the most toys wins", and he certainly had enough toys. I don't think he ever actually even used that Jet Ski; ghod knows why he felt the need to buy one.

...so what have I got, in comparison? Well, I had quite a bit before the divorce. A house full of books, most of which Grandpa would dismiss as trash. A fair number of toys, to be absolutely honest, although my toys tend to be a lot cheaper than his were ... I collect toy robots and dragons, among other things, and leave the Jet Skis where they lay.

...but I've also made the 3:30 jump to hyperspace with Han and Chewie more than fifty times, now.

I've walked the steppes of ancient Hyborea, sword in hand, working for an obol a day, plus plunder.

I've studied Martian under Valentine Michael Smith, and learned a thing or two about religion and man and the human heart.

I've crossed the width of the Ringworld once, and seen the mysteries of the Ringworld Engineers.

I've held conversations with Mesklinites, with Bolos, with Berserkers, and with Dorsai, on a hundred different worlds.

I've encanted the Ritual of Saii'ed with the Atlantean wizards Klarkash-Ton and Ech Pi'el, and glimpsed secrets that have made weeping jelly out of lesser men.

I've beaten an earth-pig born at Diamondback... twice.

...and I've lain in the darkness of the dead sea bottoms at night, and watched the hurtling moons of Barsoom whirl by overhead.

…and I try not to judge a chap by what he reads on his off time.

Tell me, now, who's a poor man.

Notes:
1. To this day, I can't sit through The Alamo, which is not only wildly inaccurate, historically speaking, but not one of John Wayne's better efforts. There's better John Wayne movies, and better Alamo movies… but as far as my grandpa was concerned, The Alamo was the final word on the subject. Because it had John Wayne in it.
2. Barsoom was the word for Mars in Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter Of Mars books.
3. Hyborea was the name of the continent Conan spent all his time adventuring in.
4. Mesklinites, Bolos, Berserkers, and Dorsai: the critters, machines, and people of four classic sci-fi works I discovered that summer (Mission Of Gravity, by Hal Clement; the Bolo series, by Keith Laumer; the Berserker series, by Fred Saberhagen; and the Dorsai series, by Gordon Dickson. Worth reading.)
5. Klarkash-Ton and Ech Pi'el were fictional characters in the works of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft… get it?
6. No, I wasn't going to summer school to make up a class. Dad actually wanted me to take freshman English ahead of time so I wouldn't tangle with the freshman English teacher at my high school... he was a counselor there, and knew quite well that the English teacher and I would mix like fire and gasoline...