From elmwood@firstsaga.com Tue Dec 24 17:24:59 1996 Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 13:35:40 -0400 From: Susan Bischoff To: b5-creative@lists.best.com Subject: bizarre story [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] Hi all! This is my first time posting to this list although I have been lurking entirely too long. This is a true story of what happened last week. There are no spoilers anywhere. "Stars" I was at work at Waldenbooks one busy Saturday clockwatching. I looked up and this fiftyish man was standing there looking lost. "Do you need help?" I asked. "Yes. I'm looking for a book, but I don't know the title or author. The word 'stars' is in the title and I think the authors initials..." blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I can really do a search with one common word and two lwtters of the alphabet. Geez, I would STILL be sorting them Well, at least he didn't tell me the book had a green cover. Anyway, we went over to the sci-fi section and looked where he thought the book might be. As we looked he told me a little more about the author. "He was first published in the forties, I remember reading about the books as a kid. I read recently that his books have been reprinted." Going on that info I took him up to the magazine section to scan the latest issue of Locus. As we both looked through a copy he continued talking about the author. "Most science fictionfrom the forties and fifties is really dated because our technology, especially computers, has really taken off..." blah, blah. (Sorry folks, sometimes things go in one ear and out the other - oh look, Anne McCaffrey just submitted a new book! Ah, nuts, it's in the 'Freedom's Landing series.) "This man though had such incredible characters that they are still fresh today. He went beyond the technology. He used telepaths." BONK!! My head whipped up. "Telepaths?! What were those initials again? "A. B." Pointing my finger at him, I almost screeched, "ALFRED BESTER!!" "Yeah!" he said. "I think that's it!" I go scampering back to the section and sho 'nuff theres the book. I'm laughing hysterically by this time, trying to explain in a coherent fashion HOW I pulled his name out of a hat. (In case some of you don't know, Alfred Bester, THE TELEPATH, is named after Alfred Bester, the author. JMS really likes his books.) The customer was happy I found the book, but for some - unknown - reason didn't get the amusement out of it I did.:( When I told my manager yesterday, the only thing he had to say was, "Susan, you scare me. You are TOO into this show." Spoilsport. At least some people thought it was cool.