Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:31:08 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Coincidence?
From: "Elspeth Kovar" <ekovar at panix.com>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

> So tonight as the weekly meeting of my writers group, The Vicious Circle
> (so-named by Charles Sheffield decades ago), Richard Moore noticed the
> printed copy of Alexis's open letter sitting on my table, and we fell to
> discussing recent events.  By way of explaining them, I told him about
> Keith Googling Lee in 2002 and what he turned up.
>
> "Mighod," said Richard, who is both a SF and mystery fan, but more of a
> mystery fan, "I remember this woman who turned up *years* ago at a
> Bouchercon, claiming to be Fredric Brown's daughter!"  He began
> describing her to me.  It was Lee -- then Lee Uba.  "I don't think
> anybody believed her," he said.  "It was just a story."
>
> And maybe a story that embarrassed her by 2002, when Keith turned it up
> on Rich's on-line fanhistory Outline.

On this one I think that she may have been telling the truth.  I'd seen
that on Rich's fanhistory around the the same time I was given a copy of
>From These Ashes.  Testing the waters I made a point of praising one of
his stories when she was in the same conversation, saying quite truthfully
that I'd never read Brown before.  She had no reason to think that I'd
even know about a possible connection, the whole thing about googling not
having happened yet.

She neither claimed the relationship nor did she leap in the way people
often do when they're scared of being caught out in something.  But she
did smile slightly.

>From what was said back before things started getting so very strange
around the Gillilands by then she was quite estranged from her family.  It
may be that in disowning them, which she's pretty much done, she also
disowned that relationship.

Obviously I have no idea one way or the other but I've had a moderately
bullshit detector where she's concerned.  I don't recall any bells going
off and had the impression that this one was real.

BTW, to the best of my recollection it was her being Brown's grandaughter,
not daughter.  Being me I don't know the relevant ages.

Elspeth