who knew

I'm pretty sure I've never committed that particular faux pas. However... I met Jack Williamson in 1986, who had begun his professional sf career in 1928. I confessed to him that I hadn't read anything of his more recent than "With Folded Hands" (1947), and he laughed and said, "Well, that's okay. I think that was probably my high point." (I actually realized later that I had read the Starchild trilogy he wrote with Fred Pohl in the 1960s.)

He continued to write for another 25 years after that conversation--I wonder if he ever thought, "This is it, this is the story that beats 'With Folded Hands'!"?

The Tor article rules out a lot of comments/questions because there's no good answer for the writer to give. And I have to say, Williamson gave you a really good answer.

The only faux pas in the article that I know I've made was "have you done anything I've seen." Which I used to say every time I saw a guy I knew who did animation. He did a lot of corporate work, so the answer was always no. Eventually I realized that the question was annoying and stopped.

wait ... how could Williamson have continued to write for 25 years after your conversation? 1986 was 22 years ago. Are you from the future?

Williamson actually died in 2006, so it was 20 years, not 25. But perhaps I have transcended trivial concerns of "mathematical consistency" in the FUTURE . . . the future of bad arithmetic!