The Farewell Tour

[ornoth]

Today my newest story was printed in DargonZine. More importantly, this is my last appearance in the zine I founded almost exactly 24 years ago, at the Paleolithic dawn of the Internet era.

The story itself is nothing to write home about. I’d planned for years to write a “walking tour of Dargon” as a way of helping new readers and writers get up to speed on the city, which is the main setting for most Dargon stories. That morphed a little bit when the group decided that we’d all do something similar, describing parts of the city but trying to incorporate cross-overs between our stories.

Then, when it became clear that this was going to be my last published work for DargonZine, I made it a bit more autobiographical and changed its title from the placeholder of “Butler” (the protagonist’s name) to a rather heavy-handed double entendre: “The Farewell Tour”.

Because I never had a theme or any particular ambition for the piece, it’s a pretty flat read, not much different from any travelogue I might write. As I say, there’s no meaning to it other than departure, and no plot other than a guy walking around town noting his observations.

Its primary noteworthiness is as a fencepost: the final thing I did for the magazine I started as FSFnet back in 1984, and which I ran for two separate stints totaling around sixteen years. I stepped down as leader and editor in the latter half of 2005, although it took another two years before the new editor began assembling and sending out issues on his own.

Since my departure, there have been an impressive number of changes. I’ll decline to pass judgment on the value of those changes, because the zine and the writers’ group are not mine to rule any longer, and the new folks deserve the freedom to run things the way they choose.

After a long wait, 2008 brought the final two actions of my long tenure with DargonZine. In July I attended my final DargonZine Writers’ Summit, saying goodbyes to the core group of people who have faithfully helped me keep the zine alive, many of them for close to two dozen years. I think that gave everyone a healthy sense of closure.

And then there is today’s publication of “The Farewell Tour”.

I originally founded FSFnet to meet and work with other writers, and give us all a central place to send our stories out to appreciative fans on the nascent Internet. The first piece of fiction we ever printed was my story “Ornathor’s Saga”, which appeared in the debut issue of FSFnet back in January 1985. A year later I wrote and printed “Simon’s Song”, the very first story set in the new shared milieu called Dargon that is our sole focus to this day. Given that history, it’s very fitting that my last act as a project member isn’t putting out an issue or hosting a Summit or writing an editorial, but having my fiction printed.

The door closed. The latch fell into place with a click that was no different than any other morning, but to Butler, it rang within his ears like the tenth bell that heralded the oncoming night. With a sense of finality, he slowly turned away from the home he’d known for twenty years and began his long journey into the unknown.

Read “The Farewell Tour”