I wrote a love story set in Japan, a western, a sexy comedy. I wrote a science-fiction detective film. I wrote an epic. And I started, to amuse myself, to write science-fiction stories. I would become a combination Elh’son/Stapeldon/Clarke/Heinlein. I would
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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . .
smear brilliance like the high-priced spread across reams of virgin twenty-pound rag.
My first attempt was about an aluminum Christmas tree that took root and started to grow. It was rejected. Often.
Crushed? I was wrecked, ruined, psychologically destroyed. I should have gone to law school, vet school, learned a trade. I would starve, miserably, begging for chocolate-chip danish in the streets …
I sold a story. My twelfth. And it wasn’t even written as a story. But the next one was, and it sold too. I kept getting rejection slips, but some of them weren’t mimeographed, they were actually written to me. I joined the Science-Fiction Writers of America and met my gods—and was crushed when they turned out to be human. Sometimes more than human, sometimes less. But I was one of them.
I began to understand how a leper feels.
Harlan Ellison expressed an interest in a story of mine. Would I care to come over to his place to talk about it? Did Washington free the slaves? Did Lincoln cut down cherry trees?
I met the Harlan Ellison. I’ll never forget his first words to me, the first words from a Writer to a writer.
“First of all, Foster, you know that ninety percent of this story is shit.”
But basically, he liked the ending. Would I try again?