Introduction to Travel Diary
In his novel Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein wrote that the typical American male is convinced that he is a great warrior, a great statesman, and a great lover, and is usually wrong on all three counts.
There seems to be a similar delusion in SF fandom, where every fan and his sister are convinced that they can write a great trip report. All they need to do is go on a trip, keep a diary, and write it all up when they return home, regaling the world with a detailed account of every place they went, every sight they saw, every meal they ate, and how much fun they had (or not). In the old days, you could find these fannish trip reports in fanzines and APAs. Nowadays they have proliferated all through cyberspace, initially on bulletin boards like GEnie and Prodigy, more recently on listservs, home pages, and newsgroups. No one goes anywhere any more without producing a trip report afterwards (except for the vast majority of TAFF and DUFF winners, that is).
Unfortunately, the experience of reading the majority of these outpourings is much akin to the experience of watching your Uncle Walter’s slides of his visit to the Grand Canyon, complete with pictures of the gas stations where he stopped along the way, and the inevitable shot of Aunt Hilda straddling the continental divide.
The sad truth is that the majority of trip reports are not worth the paper they are printed on, even when they’re posted on the Internet. When confronted with one, I often find myself skimming rather than reading, looking to see if I was mentioned anywhere. I rather suspect that’s the way most fans read trip reports. We’re all looking for our own names . . . because we have given up on the prospects of stumbling on an amusing anecdote, a poignant observation, an insight into a distant land or culture. Instead we learn what the writer had for dinner on Tuesday.
Thankfully, Gardner Dozois does not write that kind of trip report. Oh, he tells us what he had for dinner on Tuesday too . . . but he never fails to serve up amusing anecdotes and poignant observations along with the neeps. Gardner writes far and away the best trip reports in fandom, as far as I’m concerned, and I am still hoping that one day some enterprising small press will realize that and collect them all together in a book. Of course, the Great Gargoo has some unfair advantages. He has always been a hell of a fine writer, for one thing. He knows how to bring a scene vividly to life, and he takes care to show us his trips where others only tell us about them. He is also the best editor in the field, as the Hugo voters keep insisting year after year after year after year. And every good editor knows not only what to put in his trip reports, but more importantly what to leave out (mainly the dull stuff).
Gardner’s accounts of his travels remind me of the work of the top best travel writers. He can describe the sights and smells of a foreign land as vividly as Paul Theroux, and he make his own adventures as funny as P.J. O’Rourke. If Asimov’s ever goes out of business, Gardner should make a second career as a correspondent for one of the big travel magazines before settling down on that hot air vent he’d reserved for his golden years. But don’t take my word for it, read Gargy’s account of his travels in Scotland in 1995, before and after the Glasgow worldcon. It’s one of his best, I think.
Like any travel writer, he tells us about the hotels and restaurants he visits, and that alone would make the report worthwhile reading for anyone planning a similar trip. But his trip reports offer many other delights above and beyond haggis and neeps (even above and beyond his frequent mentions of me). Humor, as in his discussion of the Viking contribution to Scotland’s cultural heritage, and my encounter in the bar with the Scotsman intent on ripping my head off (much more enjoyable to read about than to experience). Some lovely character sketches of folks met along the way; my favorite is the pretentious young Oxford student that he discusses with such warmth and insight. Sadness, in the death of John Brunner. Vivid evocations of Tarbert, Glasgow, Cawdor, Dumbarton, and other lochs, castles, and steak pies encountered on the road. A clear-eyed discussion of the troubled state of SF publishing in Britain. And of course, his musings on life, time, and human mortality. When you actually travel with Gargoo, you never notice this melancholy pondering, mostly because you’re laughing too hard at his latest penis joke. But read Gardner’s sad, sweet, beautiful account of his final bus trip back to Glasgow, where he ponders the passing lights in the night and the lives that hide behind them, and you’ll begin to understand the depths of the man, and to realize that when he shoves a chip up one nostril, as he so often did in Scotland, it is only his way of grappling with a deep sense of cosmic loveliness and existential despair.
George R.R. Martin