Poor Elton Elliott. In the early 1990s, Science Fiction Review, a long-running fanzine helmed by Richard E. Geis, was going to be re-envisioned as a newsstand publication containing, among other things, original fiction. Elton had expressed a desire for submissions of stories exploring nanotechnology, and I yielded to the temptation and sent him an early draft of “Suicidal Tendencies.” He liked it. Wanted to buy it. But the big plans for SFR fell through before the first issue could appear. (And before I got paid.) Which was for the best, as it turned out. Encouraged by the interest, I significantly revised and expanded the story, sent it to Full Spectrum 4, and it was accepted.
Just as that was in process, Elton called to say the plans for SFR were a “go” again, and he renewed his offer for “Suicidal Tendencies.” I explained the novelette was no longer available. Hating to leave a supportive editor in the lurch, I agreed to write a replacement story. That was “A Marathon Runner in the Human Race,” which Elton would have published except once again, the project failed to get up and running. The story was soon accepted by Kris Rusch at F&SF and was published in that magazine in early 1994.
Elton was passionate about editing a “nanotech issue” somehow, though, and soon found a new means of doing so by selling an anthology to Jim Baen at Baen Books. The title was to be Nanodreams. Elton gave me another call. I wrote “Evaporation” for the book, and the third time was the charm. In the summer of 1995, the book appeared on store bookshelves across the nation.
As mentioned in the introduction to “Suicidal Tendencies,” this may be one of my nanotech stories, but it does not fit into the milieu of the others. The future it imagines is totalitarian. In part, that is because the plot was already on-hand when Elton commissioned a piece from me for Nanodreams. About four years earlier, Harry Harrison and Bruce McAllister had solicited proposals for stories for Deathworlds, an anthology of tales of hostile worlds such as the one from Harry’s famous short novel, Deathworld. That anthology had not sold, but I knew I didn’t want to let the outline go to waste. Nanodreams turned out to be an ideal opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.