The more things change, the more they stay the same. Bryan Talbot has sent me details of an old (1981) Granada TV programme featuring him and Bob Shaw. It is part of a culture series called Celebration and includes an interview with Shaw and a production of one of his short stories, for which Bryan provides some illustrations. Bryan looks very young, Bob looks splendidly alive, and the cars look amazingly antiquated. Some things, however, don’t change. Bob can be heard complaining that science fiction gets no respect, and whenever something written as SF is good people say it is “not science fiction”.

The programme also reminded me of something else. Part of the interview with Bob has him seated at a desk, and on that desk is a familiar rocket-shaped object. It is one of these, which Bob won at the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton. There has been much muttering of late about professional writers such as John Scalzi and Fred Pohl winning the Best Fan Writer Hugo. Well Bob won it twice, in 1979 and 1980. He also won the FAAn Award for Fan Writer in 1977 and 1979. And all of this was after his novel, Orbitsville, won the 1976 British Science Fiction Association Award.

Something else that doesn’t change is that TV commercials can be really awful. The show has them at the beginning and end, for which I apologize profusely.

Due to YouTube restrictions the show is split in two parts, which I’m embedding here. The part of the time traveler is played by Jenny Eclair who is apparently famous these days for being in TV programmes that I don’t watch.