When people ask me what Nancy Kress is like, I tell them this story. Nan and I were sitting together, talking. It may have been at lunch, or an airport somewhere; I don't recall the circumstances, or even how long ago it was. "What if we'd been born into a time or culture where there were no books, no written language?" I asked, "what sort of jobs would we have?" Nan looked at me, astonished. (You may know that the Latin root of 'astonished' means 'struck down in stone' and that was an accurate description of her expression). "No written language?!" she said, "I wouldn't exist! There would be no place for me." That's what Nancy Kress is like: Nancy as writer is Nancy as her Self. I met Nan early in her career. She had a marvelous first novel out, The Prince of Morning Bells. This is a cheerful, sunny-tempered book remarkable for two things: the protagonist is a woman (and in the very early 80's all fantasy heroes were male) and the princess of the story abandons castle and prince to go on a Quest for knowledge. All Nancy's work since then has fulfilled the promise of the Quest implicit in that first novel: each is a significant answer to an important question. Nan was finishing The White Pipes when we first became friends. This was followed by The Golden Grove, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, and of course, Beggars in Spain. Each of these novels features a woman protagonist and each confronts an issue central to humankind's own search for self-awareness: the ambiguities of romantic love; the tragedies and self-sacrifices of maternal love; the search for common ground between human and alien; the price of new knowledge; and in her most recent, ambitious work, the impact of irreclaimable change on the human race. Her short stories have a narrower scope, but an even greater accuracy and poignancy of response to those ambiguities which lie, as Graham Greene puts it, "at the heart of the matter." Stories like "Philippa's Hands," "The Price of Oranges," "In Memoriam," "Trinity" and "Out of All Them Bright Stars" offer a brilliant focus on questions asked by all of us of ourselves at one time or another: How much sacrifice is too much? Is there a God? If there is a God... where is God? Why can't I go home again? A writer's greatness is illuminated in his craft, and Nan's style is direct and unsentimental, reflecting the intelligence behind it. Like the best archers, Nan fires words on to the page with the accuracy of arrows shot from a forty pound bow. She rarely misses the target. So that's Nancy's Self -- at least from my point of view, as a friend of ten years or more. Now, I read quite a bit, as all of you must, and I often wonder about the person who can write the fiction I love. "What is this person like, who writes this marvelous stuff?" Novels and short stories are prisms, reflecting shards of the light generated by the writer behind them. Over the years, I've come to believe that our very greatest are transformed by the process, so that the persona reflected in the work is sometimes very different from the real life person who struggles with grocery shopping or check book balancing or the kids' laundry. In short, there are things about Nancy Kress as Mom, teacher, friend and woman that you never see in her novels. 1. None of Nancy's heroes ever change things. They are caught in great tides of change, frequently act as a focal point for change, but unlike Samson toppling the pillars onto the Philistines, they never lead a charge to get out there and whack away at the sandstone. Nancy herself accomplishes great changes in those who come in contact with her. Just ask the hundreds of writing students she's had over the years, who are now actively publishing. I'm one of them. Or ask the Greek immigrant she taught to read though a volunteer program here in New York. Or the subscribers to Writer's Digest magazine who write to her after reading her advice column. Or her two teenages sons, both in college now. Nan accomplishes change with charm, tact, and a pleasing sense that you've somehow become a better writer, or a better English speaker, or a smart kid all by yourself. If Nancy were on a plane that crashed in the wilderness, she'd have everyone formed into a genial tribal community in a year, a thriving village after five years, and a municipality with schools, day care, and health benefits fifteen years after that without ever running for office or encouraging a police action to quell the dissidents. 2. None of Nancy's female characters are either sensuous or beautiful. Some, like Arachne in The Golden Grove, are severely handsome. Others, like the heroines of The White Pipes, An Alien Light, and Brain Rose are Jane Eyre-plain. Miri, the Sleepless protagonist of "Beggars in Spain" is downright repellent to look at. Nancy herself - well, I'll let this next story tell you for me. We both attended a Nebula Banquet in New York City some years back. The Nebulae are as glamorous as science fiction gets, so we both dressed up as magnificently as we could. Nancy wore a pink satin, black chiffon outfit that was pretty daring from the standpoint of a country girl like me, but perfect for sophisticated New York. As we sailed down the hall to the banquet room, a Famous Critic got off the elevator. He took one look at Nancy with her black hair wild and her pink decolletage and stopped dead in his tracks. He stuttered. He shifted from foot to foot. He was, in the American idiom, 'pole-axed' by the appearence of this gorgeous brunette. The only thing that kept me from giggling was that he was a very Famous Critic and that he'd probably remember me unkindly if he ever reviewed my books. I've just told you a lot of good, true stuff about Nan. What's the Real Story? Well, there's more than a couple. 1. Don't ask her to sing. She will. Loudly. With passion. And she can't. She's tone deaf, or something. Don't let her near a pianist, a guitarist, or even somebody on the accordion. You can give her a tambourine, she's not too bad at that. 2. She gets up early. Nancy bounces out of bed at five o'clock in the morning ready to a) eat breakfast b) engage in long, coherent philosophical debate and c) run a revolution. 3. She goes to sleep when she's tired. This may not sound like an Awful Truth, but it is. If she's eating dinner, engaging in long coherent philosophical debate or leading a revolution after ten o'clock, she will get up and go to bed. It can wait until the morning. 4. She has no sense of practical physics. This is peculiar, because she once explained the Gaia theory of evolution to me using only an orange, a toothpick, and her own formidable intelligence. But Nan's relationship to the physical universe of say - automobiles is downright retarded. I drove the two of us to a convention in Ottawa once. Nancy was supposed to navigate to the hotel. She really didn't understand why I was unwilling to cross four lanes of one way traffic to make an exit 180 degrees to our left. 5. She's never late to a meeting. Normally promptness is a virtue. Nan carries it to extremes. If you've arranged to meet her for lunch at say, 12:00, she figures that Something May Happen, so she plans on being there at 11:55. If you're the sort of person that becomes distressed at the thought of someone waiting for you, you show up at 11:50, so you're not late. Nan figures she should be there at 11:45, so she's not late. Pretty soon you're meeting for breakfast when what you mean to have is lunch. I think this all has to do with Nan's sense of responsibility, which is acute. But who knows? It's pretty hard to appreciate someone like Nancy Kress in a few pages like these. All of you who attend ConFuse 93 will have much more time than that. I think you'll be delighted, as have many other fans and fellow writers, to have the opportunity.