Today, to my mild amazement, would have been the late Derek Bacon's 50th birthday. He died in mid-December of 1996, which means that in a little bit less than a year, we'll pass the invisible threshold beyond which he'll have been dead longer than he was alive. It hardly seems credible.

It should further be Leonard and Corwin's birthday, but when I originally noted down when that should be, I misremembered when Derek's had been by one day, so their birthday ended up being established in An Avatar in New Avalon (and I think by mentions in earlier stories) as June 25 instead. D'oh.

On a brighter note, it's also the 12th anniversary of the release of Megpoid, so happy birthday, GUMI. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Even though Derek's gone, I feel like I know him through your writing. He has achieved a form of immortality.

He seems like one hell of a guy, for his memory to have held on this long and this strong. I've lost friends, and I barely remember them several years later.

While I would, as Woody Allen put it, much prefer to achieve immortality by not dying...well, I have to say the way Derek apparently did it, by being such an amazing person he'll be remembered by people he never met, seems a pretty darn good alternative.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

Agreed. On more than one occasion while reading UF to Peggy I've commented that Derek seemed like the kind of person we would have paid good money to have in our social circle. Or similar sentiments.

<raises glass> Here's to you, Derek, the friend I never met whom I still seem to know so well.

-- Bob
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My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.