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Quintaglios:
Far-Seer
Fossil Hunter
Foreigner

Robert J. Sawyer wrote this tribute to his great friends Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens for the program book for MileHiCon 38 in 2006 at which they and he were jointly guests of honor.

If you call their house — which used to belong to Liam Neeson — you get Gar and Judy's answering machine. And it says, "You've¨ reached the Reeves-Stevens." Not, mind you, the¨ "Reeves-Stevenses." Granted, lopping off the last two letters¨ saves a little time in their joint byline (I vividly recall one¨ book on which their names were accidentally truncated on the¨ spine), but there's more to this shortening than that. Over on¨ the Star Trek lot, Gar and Judy were nicknamed the Binars,¨ after the paired aliens from Next Generation who finished¨ each other's sentences. It's no surprise to old friends of¨ theirs like me; we always call them "Garandjudy" as if it were a¨ single word.

For the record, back before they became their own two-person¨ Borg collective, he was Francis Garfield Stevens and she was¨ Judith Evelyn Reeves, both living in Toronto. When I first met¨ them, back in the 1980s, they were already married, and it was¨ amazing to see, even then, how close to telepathic their¨ relationship was.

Gar and Judy met when they were both working on educational¨ publishing in Canada. Judy edited a series called "Energy¨ Literacy" for use in schools, and Gar had already written a few¨ horror novels, starting with Bloodshift in 1981. Their¨ first collaboration was a Star Trek novel called Memory¨ Prime, which they began while living in Toronto. But by the¨ time they'd finished it, they'd moved to Los Angeles, just a¨ short distance from the Paramount lot. That led to them being¨ invited to write The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,¨ and other Trek-related books, including Star Trek Phase¨ II, probably the only "Making of" book ever for a television¨ series that never aired.

Their involvement with Star Trek books led to them¨ being asked to take a meeting with fellow Canadian William¨ Shatner, to see if they might be the right people to collaborate¨ with him on novels about Captain Kirk. They hit it off at once,¨ and the trio have now produced nine Kirk novels.

The Shatner connection also led to Gar and Judy becoming involved¨ with Star Trek: Enterprise, as story editors in the final¨ (and best) season. Talks were underway to bring Shatner on for a guest-starring role, and he made clear that no writers understood¨ Kirk better that the Reeves-Stevenses. By this time, they'd¨ racked up impressive TV credentials of their own, including¨ Batman: The Animated Series and Sir Arthur Conan¨ Doyle's The Lost World (they'd spent a year in Australia as¨ supervising producers on the latter), and so were readily hired¨ on as Enterprise staffers (and they appear on-screen in¨ the final episode).

Besides being superb storytellers, Gar and Judy love working¨ out details, and treating inconsistencies as challenges (who knew¨ that the Borg homeworld was also V'Ger's "planet of living¨ machines"? Gar and Judy, that's who ...). They thrive on being¨ painted into a corner, and then finding an inventive and¨ surprising way out.

In fact, early in my own career, I'd painted myself into a¨ corner with my first trilogy, The Quintaglio Ascension (the¨ trilogy title, incidentally, was Gar's coinage). In the first¨ book, Far-Seer, I'd established that there was only one¨ continent on my whole alien world, and yet in the second book,¨ Fossil Hunter, I needed to send a Darwin-like character on¨ a sea voyage of discovery so he could uncover the principle of¨ natural selection. After struggling for weeks over this, I¨ happened to mention the problem to Gar and Judy. Gar saved my¨ bacon, and my series, by saying three words: "Polar ice caps."

Although we've been friends for two decades now, most of it¨ has been after Gar and Judy moved to Los Angeles, and I regret¨ that; I wish I'd gotten to know them earlier. But, as I once¨ quipped — and, Gar and Judy, with their perfect memories, recently quoted back to me — there's a Pauli Exclusion Principle as applied to science-fiction writers: only a limited number are¨ allowed in any area. I moved into Thornhill, a northern suburb¨ of Toronto, just after they moved out. I wish it were possible¨ for us to spend more time together in the same place, but as¨ Scotty might say, "I canna change the laws of physics!"

And so I've got to be content just to rendezvous with them¨ fleetingly when the conditions are exactly right for spatial¨ interphase — which they happen to be (so long as no Tholians intrude to throw off my calculations) right here in Denver this¨ very weekend. Lucky me — and lucky you, too! Enjoy meeting the Binars ...

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Robert J. Sawyer's Guest of Honorships