Introduction: Heirs of the Perisphere

 

 

IF YOU COULD HAVE TOLD the eighteen-year-old, writing-mad Howard Waldrop that in fifteen years he would 1.) be asked to do an article by The Writer, but then not do it, and 2.) sell to Playboy for lots of (then) money, but that it would not be the pleasant, exciting experience the starry-eyed young writer dreamed of, he would not have believed you.

This far-future backward look was, as is my usual wont, written because I wanted like hell to be in Mike Bishop’s Light Years and Dark (a swell book that went straight down the tubes when published, but instead I was in there with “Helpless, Helpless”). He said this story “might as well be about a lawnmower, an air-conditioner, and a microwave”—or words to that effect. Mostly he was trying to squeeze me in. I’d futzed around to real near the deadline and he only had 3,000 words of space and money and I was trying to sell him 5,600 words, so instead I sent this off to my then-agent Joe Elder (since retired) and wrote the other story for Mike at 3,200 words, which was more like it.

Joe sent it to Alice K. Turner, who promptly bought it for Playboy for more money than I’d ever seen, except for a novel.

Now Alice Turner is one of the finest editors in the business; don’t take my word for it, ask anyone who’s ever worked with her, or see Robert Silverberg’s introductions to the stories in his ’80s and ’90s collections for his true amazement at her editing abilities (Silverberg’s seen and done it all and he doesn’t impress easily). What happened in the next fourteen months was not her fault.

We worked on this, on and off, through five successive drafts, each one getting better, deeper, more resonant, or something, until we got to the one you see.

A little background: I was going through truly terrible personal stuff. I was also behind on finishing Them Bones, my first solo novel for the late, very-missed, Terry Carr’s second set of Ace SF Specials (others—L. Shepard, K.S. Robinson, somebody named Gibson—whatever happened to him?—Carter Scholz and Glenn Harcourt, Michael Swanwick) and while I was trying to write it, other stories were driving me bughouse. I had to stop and write them AND work on Them Bones AND the rewrites on this, and deal with the here-and-now-everyday-Halloween-type personal stuff . . .

Well, it’s not Alice’s fault that I associate this story with a Bad Time; it’s just me. I wish I could have had more pleasant memories of selling to Playboy. This, like a bunch of other stories I haven’t mentioned, was up for a Nebula.

 

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There are just archetypes, and then there are true archetypes in life and in the movies. That they’ll be here long after we’ve gone I have no doubt. And the central element in this story I’d wanted to write about ever since I came across references to it when I was eight or nine or ten years old. It all came together in this story (or the one I started writing, anyway—it’s really here in this final, fifth draft).

Take a gander at this one.