Bob Eggleton Announcement

Artist Bob Eggleton asked to have his statement posted:

I’m taking a major step back from SF fandom. I’ll still do covers for my favorite people, here and there and will be around, just have to step back from some of the unkind aspects and pithy fights fandom has developed into recently to focus on my landscape, seascape and spacescape work and my Fine Art direction. People take themselves waaay too seriously in regards to awards like the Hugo and so forth. I got a bunch when it was fun and before Social Media and “campaigning.” Now I see too much backbiting and a tendency to forget the past honors going back to the Hugo’s beginning.

Events like SPACE FEST, Windy City Pulp Con, and G FEST(Godzilla Con) I will still attend as I will Boskone (local) and some of the “Monster Convention” shows. Some of the cattiness and political backbiting and disrespect in the core of “SF fandom” has been very tiring. I have been declining AGoH invites politely anyway, I wish them well but it’s not my “tribe” as it were.

“All Best Wishes, Stay Positive.”

14 thoughts on “Bob Eggleton Announcement

  1. Dear Bob,

    Well, gee, I will miss seeing you at cons, now and again, but I can certainly understand the impulse to “run away, run away.” Some mornings I wake up and wonder if all the goddam drama is worth the company. I always decide it is… so far… but it doesn’t stop me from wondering.

    One of my bestest memories was playing Pictionary (or some similar phrase-to-word game) with/against you for the amusement of the attendees at a Chicago (?) worldcon.

    You were surprisingly good when the phrase included Godzilla. Have you thought, maybe, about doing more work in that vein?

    Yeah, I know, wild and crazy notion, but hey, artist!

    pax / Ctein

  2. I’m mystified as to what “a tendency to forget the past honors going back to the Hugo’s beginning” means, but I’m glad that he’s going to keep doing what he’s been doing, and is enjoying life.

  3. Dear JJ and Tasha,

    And I would not expect an explanation to be forthcoming. It is clear that there are fanfood fights and that Bob finds them sufficiently distasteful that he doesn’t want to even be around them. Let alone attract their attention.

    It’s meaningful to Bob and, I am sure, communicates to people he is close to. It need do nothing more.

    pax / Ctein

  4. Ctein: And I would not expect an explanation to be forthcoming.

    As you can see by the lack of a question mark in my comment, it was just that, and there was no expectation whatsoever of an explanation. My interpretation is that it’s just another variation on the “you wrongfans are doing fandom, and the Hugos, wrong these days” by someone making the spurious claim that fandom never had disputes, backbiting, or unkindness in The Good Ol’ Days. 🙁

  5. Dear JJ,

    Interestingly, that is not at all how I read it. Almost the opposite, in fact.

    But, who knows????

    pax / Ctein

  6. If Bob Eggleton is happier taking a step back, then good for him.

    The background details, though I’m interested is not my really business.

    (But I’d like to add that “We’ve always been at fannish kerfuffles with Eurasia.”)

  7. In reading his material on FB, it is clear that the uninhibited amount of backbiting that goes on is disturbing.

    People also want to buy his paintings and ask him to lower the price.

    And the effort of packing and shipping and driving and flying is not encouraging.

    I understand what he means about “the tendency to forget the past”–when fans and pros met, it was a bit more fun, long time ago.

  8. As the person who accepted Bob’s first Hugo Award on behalf of the 1994 Worldcon Committee (because his invitation was mangled in the postal mail, and because he assumed there was no chance he’d win anyway so he’d not bothered to designate an acceptor), this makes me very sad. Bob was so elated to win Best Professional Artist in 1994 that he made his credit card glow in the dark by purchasing a same-day airline ticket out to Winnipeg, and we on the committee were so gobsmacked by his reaction that we re-presented his trophy prior to the Masquerade the following night.

    (The Worldcon Masquerade is not always on the third night of the con, nor is the Hugo Award ceremony always on the fourth night. 1994 was a year they were the other way around.)

    As the WSFS division manager (and one of the few people who actually knew who had won, and that Bob hadn’t designated anyone to accept that we knew of), I was on edge when Best Professional Artist came up, and when he was announced, I had to carefully look around to make sure there wasn’t someone who Bob had designated but who hadn’t checked in. When nobody else stood up, I went up and accepted, much to Toastmaster Barry Longyear’s bemusement, particularly as I forgot to introduce myself. I then took off with the trophy to store it in the Events office upstairs, again to the consternation of everyone who didn’t know I was the WSFS division manager. (I then retrieved it for the post-ceremony photo session.)

    Incidentally, I’m working to get a copy of the 1994 Hugo Award ceremony online. There will be an announcement at TheHugoAwards.org when we get it done. Not immediately, but we have the source VHS tape and are working on the conversion.

  9. Kevin, I’d really like to see the Conadian Hugo ceremony, as that was the last time I won a shiny pointy thing. Please e-mail me directly when that happens!

  10. JJ, no, Bob is not talking about Wrongfans and he’s not anything like a Puppy. That’s downright funny, really.

    He’s not a thickskinned guy that everything rolls off of, and over the last few years, he’s been finding fandom more stressful. It’s also expensive for an artist to travel to a non-local convention–and as his art direction changes, he’s been finding that for non-local events, especially Worldcon, the hassles far outweigh the benefits.

    Professionally, he’s better off doing gallery shows.

    He’s not cutting himself off from fandom; it’s just going to be mostly local cons.

    He’s been talking about this off and on for several years, including on his Facebook page. He’s finally decided to do it.

  11. Lis Carey: Bob is not talking about Wrongfans and he’s not anything like a Puppy.

    I never said anything about him being a Puppy. I took a look at his Facebook wall before I posted my comment, and it was made in that context.

    What I did say is that I see the same thing I’ve seen from a number of older fen here on File 770, on Facebook, on other fan forums, and at the WSFS Business Meeting:

    1) “have to step back from some of the unkind aspects and pithy fights fandom has developed into recently”

    In other words, “fandom was great back in the day, but now it’s filled with disagreements”. This is something which is patently untrue; the time period he is referencing was the 80s and 90s, and there were plenty of stoushes in fandom during that time, the Minicon split and the TAFF dustup being two of the more notable ones. So which of the recent disagreements in particular does he have a problem with, that are so much worse than those in the 80s-90s?

    2) “People take themselves waaay too seriously in regards to awards like the Hugo and so forth. I got a bunch when it was fun and before Social Media and campaigning.”

    Yes, I’m sure that it was a lot more fun for him back when he was consistently showing up on the ballot. It seems a little petty for him to be dragging the Hugos now. This is just another variation on the “the Hugos are all broken these days, and aren’t going to the right things anymore” schtick that a number of older fen keep bringing up.

    He admits that he is announcing that he is going to be continuing to do something that he has already been doing for years. Why? What’s the purpose of making a huge production out of announcing non-news, apart from being able to complain about the two things above?

    By all accounts I’ve seen and heard, Eggleton is a good guy. But this statement just reads like a pretext for expressing discontent with the Hugo Awards. Which of course, he is entitled to do, but making a huge production of it in this way is kind of bizarre.

  12. He admits that he is announcing that he is going to be continuing to do something that he has already been doing for years. Why?

    Perhaps because if it’s generally known that you’re not accepting AGoH invitations, people won’t make so many.

  13. Love you, Bob. I totally support your decision. Sometimes we just need to pull back and focus on a few things to keep our lives, hearts, and minds healthy and happy. Hugs.

Comments are closed.