Barry Childs-Helton HoF

Barry passed the height limit for astronauts in seventh grade, stopped well short of the stratosphere, and hasn't played basketball since the 20th century. He started writing science-fiction-tinged folk-rock in college -- though unaware, as yet, of the filk tradition. He spent grad school at Indiana University (M.A. in creative writing and Ph.D. in folklore), and has subsidized his arty habits by working as a computer-book editor since 1991.

He and co-conspirator/spouse Sally began going to cons in 1982; their first fannish activity as a creative team was as masquerade costumers. Then Midwestern Filk Grandmistress Juanita Coulson invited Barry to join an onstage bardic semicircle at InConJuncTion V; he's been fusing SF, folk-rock, and space travel (with all the blues and jazz he could muster) ever since, often with Sally's percussion and a vintage Guild 12-string.

The Childs-Heltons released two studio filk recordings in the heyday of the chromium-dioxide cassette, a live CD with the Black Book Band in the 1990s, and (so far) three CDs with Wild Mercy (the most recent, Dream of a Far Light, is Barry's space-migration song cycle).

Warning: Pegasus nominations for his musical activities over the years (as songwriter, band member, and performer) have only served to encourage him; he'll probably play to fannish audiences as long as he can pick up a guitar. (He's picked up quite a few of those over the years, thanks to chronic Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, joneses for doublenecks, baritone guitars, fretless basses, and 12-strings, and a very patient spouse.) For occasional mischief, he still enjoys perplexing Indy-area bar audiences on open-mic nights with abstruse lyrics and unrepentant speculative humor.

Representative Work for the 2011 Pegasus. Note- this is NOT a song nominated for the 2011 Pegasus Awards.

Small Designs

Words and Music © Barry Childs-Helton
from "Paradox" by Barry and Sally Childs-Helton,
Space Opera House Records, 1989
All Rights Reserved- Lyrics posted with permission of the author

Small designs --
the artifice of spiderwebs on traffic signs,
or paper that I roughen with these pencil lines,
lost explorer's tracks through Arctic snow.

Small delights --
half-carafe of burgundy on weekday nights --
daydreams move like children flying bird-wing kites,
gentle threads that tie the earth and sky.

Mermaids with wings,
high above the sea they sing:
"Climb till you've won.
Just don't fly too near the sun."

I'll go to you
with this cloudy prism that I'm looking through,
and I will bring you something either good or true --
take these weathered branches from my eyes.

Come to me
before I lose the simple light that's let me see
a season full of shooting stars and reverie --
when it dims, I can give nothing more.

Impartial fools,
carpenters with welder's tools,
make magic gates --
places where the pilgrim waits.

I'll cross the sky
with words as sharp as truth and soft as any lie,
to cut the knot of sadness if it won't untie.
Go with me or stay here if you will.

Reach through the night
in flame and silver, where the stars are far and white,
to touch a world where death is not paid for delight --
watch its shadow fall from fragile hands.

I'd go in quest,
but it ill becomes a guest
to leave too soon,
even in this short cartoon
filled with . . .

small designs --
medieval manuscripts and tunes for chimes,
or wings you barely see erasing wintertime --
waiting for the changing wind of love.