Woman

**AFTERWORD**

When I am asked how I got the idea for any particular novel, I can (usually)

provide an answer.

For I Am Legend, it came while I was viewing Bela Lugosi's

Dracula. It occurred to me that if one vampire is scary, what if the whole world

was full of vampires?

For The Shrinking Man, the idea came during another movie I was viewing. Many

of my ideas came from movies - most likely not very good movies. A good movie

does not create ideas since I am totally involved in it. A poor movie, on the

other hand, might have some small element which brings on my imagination. So it

was with this film. In a brief moment, which had nothing to do with the overall

story Ray Milland unwittingly dons Aldo Ray's hat. His head being smaller than

Ray's, the hat comes down over his ears. What, it came to me, would Ray Milland

think if it was his own hat which now was too big for his head? Thus the genesis

of a story about a man who discovers that he is shrinking.

For Hell House the notion arose as a result of many years of reading about

haunted houses topped by a reading of Shirley Jackson's novel about Hill House.

She never (in my memory) indicated the presence of an actual ghost. At least she

never described one. The ghosts she had in mind were more than likely created by

the psyche of one of the two women who came to the house. They were

psychological ghosts brought on-or released-by the dark atmosphere of the

house.

I didn't choose to go that route. I wanted my house to contain tangible

ghosts. While the atmosphere of Hell House certainly has an effect on the minds

of its quartet of invaders, visible, audible ghosts exist as well.

And for A Stir of Echoes recollections of a tract house my wife and I-and our

two (then) children lived in-plus a desire (motivated by a beginning dislike of

the "genre" concept) to combine a ghost story with a murder mystery brought on

that novel.

For Woman . . . nothing. No memory whatsoever of its creative

birth.

It seems most peculiar to me that such a (I hope) provocative concept

came to me and left no trace of its genesis.

My wife has suggested that a three-year period during which I was writing a

six-hour television adaptation of Philip Wylie's The Disappearance brought on

the notion.

In Wylie's story, half of the disappearance results in a world populated

exclusively by women, with the logical results of that condition. As I recall,

the world, struggling back from technological limitations, does become a

workable, more humane society-while the other half of the world, exclusively

men, goes (rather rapidly) all to hell. As it probably would.

It certainly seems a reasonable idea that this adaptation (never filmed, I

add regretfully; another unrealized dream) engendered the germ of an idea which

ultimately became Woman, first a play (as yet unstaged), then the novel which

you just (I assume) read.

I don't remember it happening that way, however. Even more strangely, I don't

recall research reading on the subject although, obviously, I did, quoting a

number of sources in the novel.

 So, how did it happen? Did I channel

some otherworldly manuscript? Did I contact Philip Wylie while I was

sleeping?

 I doubt any of that. It's my concept, my story. Still, that a

concept so specific, a concept rather unique (I think) should not be clearly

deposited in my memory bank remains perplexing to me.

 However, I

imagine that any number of story and novel ideas I've come up with in the past

60-plus years have no source remembrance in my mind.

 With regard to

Woman, though, I have for many years certainly subscribed to its

concept.

 That the so-termed female revolution (feminism) has resulted

in many major alternations in society-alterations positive to the world--goes (I

hope) without saying. Women in business, women in politics, women in education,

women in religion, women in all areas of society itself.

 But is it

enough? Has Nature (Mother Nature I feel compelled to add) come to the ultimate,

albeit reluctant conclusion that revolution is not enough? That evolution must

now perforce be activated in order to conclude Man's unending destruction of the

world and all living things on its surface?

What more is there to

say? Could be.