From: "Alice K. Turner" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Newt's main referent
Date: Sun, 1 Sep 2002 21:03:41 -0400

Good call, Nick. Some major convention (WorldCon, I guess) was held in, I
think, Atlanta in the 80s and Newt, for reasons that I think had to do with
Bruce Sterling, was the banquet speaker. Though I'm not much of a
conventioneer, I attended this (my parents lived in Atlanta) as a friend of
Lucius Shepard, and, though I never met him there, I'm pretty sure Wolfe was
on hand. I'd only barely heard of Gingrich at that point. But, among the
more politicially minded, there was much furor, and a contingent, including
Lucius (but not me), ostentatiously walked out of the banquet as Gingrich
was introduced. Can't remember much about the speech or the evening
otherwise except that both were boring--but that you expect. Gingrich seemed
more menacing later, but that was the explicit SF connection. (Sorry to be
so vague on particulars, but I've sort of accidentally attended a few
conventions or parts of them; the only ones I remember well are those I'd
planned in advance, and this was a last-minute thing--if it wasn't Atlanta I
apologize, but it was somewhere else I just happened to be for other
reasons.)

-alga


> Considering when EXODUS FROM THE LONG SUN was being
> written (1994-5), Councillor Newt has a pretty obvious
> real-life referent: Newt Gingrich, elected Speaker of
> the US House of Representatives after the unexpected
> Republican congressional election victories of
> November 1994. From what we see of Newt, the
> resemblance is pretty profound...
>
> --Nick Gevers.
>
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