Stainless Steel Visions

After a bit the editorial office began to look like an exhibition of the totally incompetent. There were as many bad artists as there were bad writers. Very rarely one of these smears would be of cover quality. When I visited Galaxy and one of them caught my eye, Fred would force a photocopy of the cover upon me — or any other visiting author. Because if he could get a story that matched the painting he would have a free cover, which did wonders for the editorial budget. It was a challenge to fit all the strange elements of the art into a story; a challenge I rose to a number of times. Money and fame, a cover story the hard way.

Occasionally a story would be commissioned, a practice more common today. Isaac Asimov roughed out some possible world futures, each one brought about by a different advance in biology. Bob Silverberg edited an anthology of stories that fleshed out these futures. One of these intrigued me, and you will read "Brave Newer World" here.

When the great editor John W. Campbell died, I edited an anthology of original stories done in his memory. A last tribute by his authors. It turned into a sort of end-of-series tribute with Poul Anderson writing a last Van Rijn space trader story, Clifford Simak doing a last City story. Others did the same. I wrote the story "The Mothballed Spaceship" featuring the characters from my "Deathworld" trilogy.

Looking at the stories here triggers some interesting memories — often a history longer than the story itself. I had the plot of "The Streets of Ashkelon" cooking on the back burner of the mind for many years. I did not write it, because I knew that no editor would dare buy it in those years of prudery and self-censorship. It wasn't until Judy Merril decided to edit a book of taboo-breaking stories that I actually wrote the story. It was accepted for the anthology titled, I think, The Thin Edge, and paid for. The book never appeared, for publishing reasons now completely forgotten. With some difficulty I regained the rights to the story and watched while it was rejected by every magazine in the United States. Unlike the USA, Great Britain admits that atheists exist and do not eat children; there are even professed atheists in Parliament. So this story appeared in the English magazine New Worlds and was anthologized as well by Brian Aldiss. After a great many years it did cross the ocean and even appeared in an anthology of teenage science fiction.

Writing short stories is good training for the novelist. Among other things, it teaches economy of language. Every word must count in the short story, must be important and essential. Or it must be thrown out. Writers who practice this dictum are Brian Aldiss, Thomas M. Disch, and Robert Sheckley. Their stories move and sing and captivate.

Would there were more like them. I have read too many short stories that just didn't work. Because, like many others in the early days of SF, I wore many different hats. I have edited magazines, edited alone or in collaboration over fifty anthologies, illustrated SF magazines and done SF book jackets. I feel that I have learned from this process and my stories have profited.

One thing I did learn was that too many stories do not start at the beginning. Once the plot has been established there is a natural and logical place for the story to begin. Before I ever published a story I pointed out any weaknesses to the author. If they agreed they would do a rewrite. (In all the years of editing only one author ever refused to consider a rewrite.) No name, no pack drill, so I shall not reveal who these eminent authors really are. Author A always started his story on the third page of the manuscript. After grumbling, he would reluctantly agree and throw away the surplus pages. Author B submitted a lovely story that I published — only after he accepted the fact that the first twenty pages had nothing to do with the plot. They were replaced by one sentence.

You can educate yourself about the craft of short-story writing by reading closely and learning from the process. But you can learn a lot more by editing. For nine years Brian Aldiss and I edited The Year's Best Science Fiction. I read all of the American magazines, Brian all of the English — and we both skimmed the non-SF publications for stories that we might be able to use. It was an education indeed. Brian, far stronger than I, persevered in his reading right to the very end. My throat began to close after about the fifth year. For the last few years I couldn't face the magazines cold and had Bruce McAllister act as a first reader. He did a wonderful job, and about one out of every three stories he passed on appeared in the anthology.