Never meet your heroes

Some heroes are safer at a distance

This August, I wrote a glowing review of Ted Chiang’s books. I think he’s the best science fiction short story writer alive. I recently had a chance to meet him at an upcoming conference, only 10 minutes from my house, and decided not to go. Why? Because of a hard-earned and yet accidental lesson from high school:

When I was in eleventh grade I won some state-level awards for short story writing and poetry.

The contest had a “special speaker” give a talk. The speaker was a fantasy author that I’ve read many books from before, the type that non-fantasy readers wouldn’t have heard of but almost every fantasy reader my age probably has (so not like Sanderson or Rowling, but only 1 tier below). The speaker arrived late and went on for a long rambling speech about their life and how they came to be a writer and why their books were brilliant. It felt like hours but I think it lasted like 30-40 minutes.

I don’t know who told the speaker it was a good idea. Most of us were just there to get our award and hang out (“network”) with our fellow aspiring writers. Anyway, afterwards the consensus among me and the other students was that the person was kinda an asshole. Keep in mind that, unlike me, most of the other students weren’t fantasy fans, so the experience was even worse for them.

After that experience, I could never read another of their books again. I don’t in principle endorse this. I think it’s good and virtuous to be able to separate an author from their work. I still read Sylvia Plath even though she’s not very nice, and I imagine I’d be able to read Neil Gaiman again despite far worse allegations than being a really boring speaker at an event.

I’m just saying that, empirically, after meeting this speaker in-person and having a very direct negative impression, I couldn’t read another book by them again. They went from a second-tier writer who I respected and wanted to emulate (child-me wanted to become a professional fantasy writer), to being someone whose books teenage/young adult me would skip past at airport bookstores in favor of third-tier thrillers or memoirs by politicians or something.

“Never meet your heroes” Generated with Google Nano Banana

I mention this because recently I’ve written a detailed essay on Ted Chiang’s body of work that I’m quite proud of, and I still hope will become among the definitive reviews of Ted Chiang’s writings. But I’ve also read up on his views on AI, which I do not find at all plausible. And I suspect if he were to meet me, he’d think of me as a cultist or something, just because I think there’s a double-digit chance that AI systems would be globally catastrophic within my lifetime.

And I realize there’s a conference he’s going to that I could probably attend as well, where seeing him would otherwise be a great draw for me. But I’m really worried I’d meet him, he’d call me and/or my friends mean names, and I would not actually change my mind at all about AI risk, because I’ve thought about these fairly carefully for many years, and I doubt any of his arguments would be novel. Instead, the practical effect is that I’d have a hard time separating the work from the person, and it’d entirely ruin my enjoyment of his fiction.

I know at some level this is childish, but I also seriously worry that, without justifying or condemning my own flaws, this will just happen. And I think losing a literary hero will be unpleasant to me, with limited or no upside.

So I decided not to go. Prudence, cowardice, or overthinking neuroticism? I’m still not sure.