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convention in July. I met Anne two months later at Baycon, the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention, held at the Hotel of Usher in Berkeley. I rode up there on my motorcycle. Despite having sold a script to that TV show (the one with the guy who had bangs and pointy ears), I was still a skinny, awkward kid who had not yet outgrown various adolescent self-esteem issues.
    I met Anne McCaffrey in the bar. In those days, the real convention always happened in the bar. I also met Frederik Pohl, Harry Harrison, Robert Silverberg, Terry Carr, Randall Garrett, Frank Herbert, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, Philip Jose Farmer, Lester del Rey, Betty and Ian Ballantine, John W. Campbell, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Leigh Brackett, A. E. van Vogt, and almost every other author who had informed my childhood and teenage years with hours of wonder. It was better than Disneyland.
    Anne McCaffrey was the secretary-treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America.
    The SFWA had been founded in 1965 by Damon Knight. For several years, SF writers had been muttering that they needed some kind of organization. One day, Damon Knight sent out letters saying, “Send me five dollars for your dues.” And that was how the SFWA was started. By 1968, Anne McCaffrey had taken on the unrewarding duties of collecting dues, managing the membership roles, and publishing the newsletter. In effect, she was the organization. This made her the reigning queen of science fiction.
    In those days, the only qualification for membership in the organization was that you had to have published a science fiction story. I asked Anne if writing a script for that TV show would count. She made an immediate executive decision that it did and collected my five dollars. Since then, membership qualifications have been made much stricter, but I do not believe that this was my fault.
    Anne and I hit it off immediately. I can’t say what the magic was—because it was magic. Magic doesn’t work if you analyze it. But there were sparks struck at that convention that triggered a lifelong friendship. Anne was nominated for a Hugo Award; so was I. I sat next to her at the awards banquet. I held her hand when she won; she held my hand when I didn’t. I celebrated with her; she commiserated with me. That cemented the bond.
    In July and August of 1969, 1 experienced several of the life lessons that fuel much of the world’s greatest literature. It is one thing to use words like ecstasy and joy and horror and anguish —it is quite another to experience those emotions and discover that words alone are simply insufficient. I’ll say this much—testifying at a murder trial was never on my list of things I wanted to do. It’s not a fun experience. I’ve had fun; that wasn’t it.
    But it was a turning point. Writers are people who process emotions into words, attempting to capture, evoke, and recreate those feelings. So if I had to pick a moment at which I began to shift from someone who just typed to someone who was actually writing something worth reading, I would pick the aftercrash of 1969.
    The 1969 Worldcon was held at another Hotel of Usher, this one in St. Louis. Seeing Anne again reminded me of how much fun was still available in the world. Anne seemed to move in a cloud of white light. She glowed. She sparkled with fun and generosity. She made everyone around her feel loved.
    After the convention, we kept in touch by letter, by phone call (very expensive long-distance phone calls), and finally, she invited me to visit her in New York for Thanksgiving with the McCaffrey-Johnson clan. It was an old-fashioned holiday, and the emotional nourishment was far more lasting than the physical.
    In 1970, just as Anne was realizing she had to get out of New York, I was beginning to realize that I had to get out of Los Angeles. I was talking with Anne almost every week now. I don’t know if she knew it because there was a lot I