Another Introduction to Travel Diary
Look at him, and you’d never think Gardner Dozois was a world traveler. (Of course, you’d never think he had a dozen or more Hugos stashed away either.)
I don’t look much like any more of a world traveler than Gardner does, but I’ve traversed even more of the globe than he has, and have placed about a dozen trip reports of my own in various magazines, so naturally I pounced at the opportunity to introduce Gardner’s pale imitation of my work.
Except, he said bitterly, it’s neither pale nor an imitation. It is the true, essential Dozois, than which nothing is more unique. If you first encounter him in public, you wonder why he didn’t go into a more lucrative career as a nightclub comic. If you first meet him through his very best stories, you could be forgiven for wondering why he doesn’t take an occasional antidepressant. If you meet him one on one, you quickly find that he is so deeply committed to excellence as both a writer and an editor that his passion is almost palpable.
But here, in his diary of his trip to England and Scotland in the late summer of 1995 (culminating in the Worldcon, where we each won a Hugo—but where I also lost three, while he finished the evening undefeated), you get perhaps the truest picture of Gardner Dozois that you’re likely to get in this lifetime. He notices details; you’ll rarely get better descriptions of the places he visited and the things he saw. He’s honest; when he chooses a lousy restaurant or entertainment, he doesn’t blame the travel agent—and he tells you why it was lousy.
Mostly, as with any good travel writer, he puts you there. I felt that I was in the Wigham restaurant when the eight French guests decided they didn’t like the food. A few pages later I sat on the lawn with Gardner and Susan, cold drink in hand, watching the stars just outside Oxford. A bit earlier I’m there with them, sharing their awe at the zoo’s display of falconry.
Gardner, you will notice, remembers every meal he ever ate and every bed he ever slept in. He’s a lot less grouchy than V. S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux, probably the two most famous of the current crop of travel writers, which would certainly seem to make him a better travel companion. He can keep you interested describing a relatively uneventful day in the British hinterlands, while Theroux needs corrupt islanders or Chinese militarists and Naipaul requires top-to-bottom racism to grab and hold the reader’s attention. (Think hard: would anyone read a happy Theroux, or a contented Naipaul?)
Trust me: this kind of travel diary, one that can captivate readers even when the author isn’t facing charging elephants or exploding volcanoes, is a lot harder to write than it looks. I mean, hell, he was never even arrested by the local gendarmes and I kept reading it. And wondering which of his approaches and techniques I could use to improve my own trip reports, than which there is no higher compliment, at least from me.
One final note: you cannot help but be aware of Gardner’s fascination with food and restaurants. The last time I was flown into Philadelphia to speak to the local science fiction club, Gardner invited Carol and me to dinner at his favorite restaurant and promised to show us a hot time.
He did.
Literally.
We were seated, studied our menus, and ordered appetizers—and, so help me, the goddamned restaurant burned down before they arrived. Honest.
Mike Resnick