Introduction to
“ZERO GEE”

Writing introductions to the stories of strangers or casual acquaintances, even close friends, is relatively easy. Just rap, that’s all. Start somewhere near or far, and go with it. I enjoy it. But when I am confronted with the prospect of writing an introduction to someone I love, of a sudden I get typer-tied.

It happened in Dangerous Visions with Silverberg, with whom I’ve been very close friends through most of my adult life. God only knows what I’d do if Isaac had submitted a story—I simply wouldn’t know how to do an intro for Asimov (though the sensuous dirty old man had no difficulty doing one on me).

What I’m trying to fumble toward, is that I just don’t know where to begin, talking about Ben Bova.

Maybe it’s that, like Joe Hensley and Lester del Rey and Henry Slesar and Bob Bloch and Phil Farmer and Norman Spinrad and Roger Zelazny, he means so much to me, is so fixed and substantial a part of my world, that I could no more casually introduce him and his work than I could rap about air or the way my eyes perceive color or the taste of special foods. (And I pause. My God, I’m the luckiest fool in the world, to have friends like these.)

I met Ben maybe ten years ago, at one of Damon Knight’s Milford Writers’ Workshops. We became friends almost instantly. Even though his wife at the time, Rosa, was compelled to give me a crack in the mouth that starts a headache even today, when I think about it.

When I needed to know everything there was to know about lasers, it was Ben I called long distance. It was Ben who gave me the best Christmas present of my life, when he called to say John Campbell had bought “Brillo,” my first sale to Analog and the culmination of a twenty year dream. It was Ben who kept me from running amuck during the most boring week of my life. And it was Ben Bova whom I called on the ugliest night of my life when I was so far down I thought I’d never crawl up again.

Ben Bova is so commanding of respect, on every possible level one might conceive, that introducing him is like talking about one’s father, or big brother, or blood brother.

It is simply, friends, a task beyond me.

I ask you excuse me on this one.

And Ben, to make up for my shorting you, next time Avco Everett Research Labs send you to LA on business, I’ll run through not only the Loonie Tunes routine about the vaudeville frog in the cornerstone, but the Daffy Duck number, as well.

Ben reports:

“I was born on the day Franklin Roosevelt was first elected. Got interested in science fiction, astronomy, and rockets all at the same time . . . when I saw the first issue of Action Comics, with the opening illustration showing the infant Superman leaving the exploding planet Krypton on a rocket.

“Worked on newspapers and magazines in the Philadelphia area before, during, and after attending Temple University, where I got a degree in journalism in 1954. By 1956, my real loves came to the fore, and I went to work for the Martin Company in Baltimore, as technical editor for Project Vanguard. Moved to New England in 1958 (after orbiting a Vanguard satellite, with help from a few engineers). Wrote movie scripts for a renowned bunch of physicists who were building a new course in physics for high school kids. Then joined Avco Everett Research Laboratory, first as science writer, now as manager of marketing. Duties consist of telling science fiction stories to the Government, which shells out money to make the stories come true. And they do, very frequently! The Laboratory works on ABM problems, lasers, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD, for short), and artificial hearts. Among other things.” In November 1971, I became editor of Analog; nobody was more surprised than I.

And a reasonably complete bibliography of Bova books reads as below. (One point should be made, however: for those who’ve shelled out cash for the Paperback Library novelization of THX 1138 that Ben wrote, the clever publisher left off the last page or so of the original manuscript. Blame them, not Ben.)

science fiction

The Star Conquerors, 1959

Star Watchman, 1964

The Weathermakers, 1967

Out of the Sun, 1968

The Dueling Machine, 1969

Escape! 1970

Exiled from Earth, 1971

THX 1138, 1971

science fact

The Milky Way Galaxy, 1961

Giants of the Animal World, 1962

The Story of Reptiles, 1964

The Uses of Space, 1965

In Quest of Quasars, 1969

Planets, Life and LGM, 1970

The Fourth State of Matter, 1971