| INTRODUCTION
EXCEPT possibly to other anthologists, the authors included herein and maybe some who are not, the two truly wonderful persons to whom this book is dedicated, and perhaps a curious few, it's my belief that introductions to books are more widely skipped by readers than rope is by children around the world. Well, good. That takes off a lot of restraint and makes this a kind of talk with very warm and dear friends. They may disagree. I hope they do; any single viewpoint inflicted on a literature is the end of that literature. I'm afraid some authors think that's what I'm doing when the fact is that I can put aside any personal conviction of mine for the sake of a good story, and insist that the story be true to its theme. "Willing suspension of disbelief" is what that used to he called. Jolt that willing suspension into a "Huh?" and there is a story flaw that needs repairing. As an editor, I can spot these wrong turns. As a writer, I'm no better judge of holes in my own logic than any other writer. When I violate the pure necessities of the story and that grand old salty doctrine "Show 'em. Don't tell 'em!", I need and am grateful for the same point-outs and resent it when I see a fumble-fingered story of mine in print that could and should have been set right. Am I serious about this? I couldn't be more serious. Do I enjoy doing revisions? No more than the next writer. But listen to this: A story I had done about four or five million words ago‚ which does qualify me as writer as well as editor, doesn't it? ‚I was picked for anthologization a while back. I read the story and it had gone so cold, a literary term for objectivity, not quality, that I read it as if it had been written by some-body else. I was delighted by the plotting‚ and, honestly, I couldn't guess the ending! But I refused to let it be anthologized unless I could revise the entire first section, a full quarter of the story, which was granted. Did it pay financially? Of course not‚but it's a better story and may pay yet. And even the payment isn't the criterion. I had done to it what should have been done in the first place, which wasn't for me to detect, because, like any other author, I had my nose pressed so closely to the story that I couldn't see what was wrong. Had the revision been asked for, I would have grumbled and felt put upon‚but the story needed it. There's nothing unique about any of this. To all but hacks and those who feel they are carving words into the Great Pyramid, a story is a fluid thing, not only up to the moment it appears in type, but sometimes afterward as well. That's why serials, to pick the most frequent examples, so often do not appear in book form exactly as they did in magazines. There are at least a couple of reasons for this. One is that editors had damned well better demand the right to make mistakes; the only way to avoid them is to make the biggest mistake of all‚ do nothing. Another is that editing, like all human occupations, is a matter of compromise; beyond a certain point, either the author tries elsewhere or the editor takes something he feels isn't as good as it might be but is worth buying. He can be wrong and so can the author‚ either way. Same as all other editors, I've turned down stories I later wished I had bought, and I'm just one of the many writers who saw their stuff in print, realized what wasn't right about it, and had the chance to revise. Funny thing about that story I was talking about before. I knew it needed a love interest and couldn't think of a single way to get it in. Well, there's a screen treatment out looking for a producer and the man who wrote it found so simple a solution that I was stunned! I'd been thinking all around the answer when there it was! If you're looking for lessons to be derived, here, how about this: I could have solved the problem in a lot less than a million years, but why hang me up when an objective eye could do it so quickly and easily? The one thing that the master craftsman envies in the apprentice is his fire. It occasionally does produce something volcanic, but then the poor wight tries to follow up and is in for a hard time, for the very reason that he is an apprentice and has done the equivalent of a pre-med student performing a brilliant major operation. The master craftsman has gone clear through the process of learning from example, books, lectures‚ and doing‚ and he discards much, much more than he uses, because he has a far wider knowledge of, let's say, his tools, how effective they are, which are called for in this or that situation, and why, and how to work them. But the notorious and feared "writer's slump," which has parallels in other human occupations, often is the result of discarding perfectly valid material, along with the wrong turns. The writer, in other words, has self-criticized himself right out of production. Sibelius is a harrowing example of that in music; he never stopped composing until he died, but for the last thirty years of his life, every piece he did wound up in the wastebasket. An editor can sometimes take a writer off his own hands. I've done it, and I've had it done for me. The unblocking is not easy work for either author or editor, but once the author is gotten out of his own way he flows! There's a terribly tragic case in C. M. Kornbluth, who is represented posthumously in this book in collaboration After years of interdicting me because I never seemed satisfied to him, he got an editorial job and told me he saw what I had meant and what, he asked, was the answer? I said, "It couldn't be simpler. Just put out a better magazine than the material that's submitted to you." No, he didn't think that was arrogant; he saw the plain necessity. Of course there are naturals, but not enough to meet deadlines‚ and, authors' beliefs to the contrary, magazines are not assembled by rejections. If author and editor happen to like each other, that's fine, but it's not a requirement, I told him, any more than between salesman and customer. And, no, he didn't think that brash or crass, for editing looks entirely different on the opposite side of the desk, and he knew I knew both sides. I was due to get a real output from him‚ and he died a week later‚ironically, shoveling the last snow of that winter. As writer, I agree that editors seem impossible to please. As editor, I know why. A writer has a responsibility only to himself; an editor's responsibility is to his whole audience. Hence an editor can't professionally have tastes or he would be publishing a magazine for only a bog or quarter or less of his readers. There's a great deal to be said for integrity of material, and don't think it's not being said at stupefying length, and any good editor sweats at keeping that integrity, especially when the author loses hold of it here and there. The integrity as the editor sees it? No, as the material demands. An extreme instance I remember is: "Gibbering idiotically, his bare feet padded across the floor." Leave it as is? Or take the author's foot out of his (here it was her) mouth? And just as a writer can goof, so, as noted before, can an editor‚ but, not being emotionally involved, he's less likely to, and he's also more likely to admit it if he does. To writers who haven't gone through the open hearth of story conferences, there's something frightening in the eager-ness of editors out after a potential smash of a story. As Pohl said of Gravy Planet, retitled The Space Merchants in book form, "It would have been a better story if you hadn't inter-fered. It wouldn't have been written, but it would have been a better story." Aside from not liking to read unwritten storiesI can't put out a magazine with them, can I? And so to the stories in this anthology. If you like ever one of them, either you're omnivorous or I flubbed. Herbei Bayard Swopes said it best for all editors: He had no foi mula for publishing a successful newspaper, but he did hay for a flop‚Äîtry to please everybody. What you like in thi book, others won't, and vice versa, and the stories were pm posefully chosen‚Äîas they were in the magazine‚Äînot t please everybody. If you like none, you're less satisfiable than an editor. H. L. Gold |