Originally Posted by
chirine ba kal
Agreed. I've known some real shits, over the years, and I don't feel the need to give them any more of my time and energy. What's been done has been done, and they'll have to live with the consequences of their actions.
Well, I think I need to state my bias at the outset; when I first started with Phil, back in early '76, I was right up front with him about wanting to be the informal archivist of his creative process. Nothing more, nothing less; what I wanted to do - and then did for decades - was simply collect, record, and store the data being generated every Thursday night. The 'custom of the house' was that every time Phil did a map or drawing, I'd make a copy and he'd keep the original. Phil was a very disorganized 'housekeeper', and after a while I would up running two sets of records in parallel. For all intents and purposes, I was the 'back-up copy'. That's it; that's all. And that's what I did.
After he passed away, I was able to make a full and complete copy of all of his files, both paper and electronic. I filled in the gaps in his collection from mine, and mine from his; I also got help from Tekumel fans from all over the world, who contributed bits of their own that they'd found over the years. At this point, what I'd consider 'the crown jewels' would be:
- The 1950s 'proto-Tekumel' materials: The maps, documents, house rules, and artwork from Phil's high school and college games. These include his fannish materials, as well as the unfinished (and lost for decades until I found it) first Tekumel novel.
- The 12-13 chapters of "Beside The Dark Pool of Memory". his last and unfinished Tekumel novel.
- His childhood toy soldiers. We did a complete photo inventory of these, as well as making copies of the photos of his childhood games that his dad took.
- The bitmaps of his fonts for his languages. A lot of these were never published.
- His artwork. One could do a coffee-table book of his artwork.
- The audio tapes. Several of the original players in our group did a series of recorded interviews with him in the late 1980s, on all sorts of Tekumel-related subjects. These tapes have never been published, and have been sitting in my files for decades unheard. We also have tapes of game sessions with him.
What did surprise me about going through his files was that there was not a lot of 'new' material - by which I mean, 'new' to me. A lot of it would be new to people, especially now that most of our old publications are no longer available. Could it be published sooner, rather then later? Sure, if somebody put the effort into it.
? "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof", so take care of the present day first!
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