Down Among the Dead Men

Afterword

There’s not much I have to say about “Down Among the Dead Men.” Horace L. Gold said he needed a novelette almost immediately for Galaxy, and most of all he wanted a space opera.

“You’ve never written a space opera, a real bangety-bang space opera,” he said. “Why not?”

“I don’t like them,” I told him. “I don’t like to read them, and I don’t like to write them. Science-fiction westerns: they’re kill-’em-on-Mercury-instead-of-Montana.”

Well, he explained, if—in spite of my bullshit fastidiousness—I managed to write one in the next week, he would give me a large bonus on the word rate and voucher the check through immediately.

As always, in those days, I could very much use the money; so I agreed to think about it. To my surprise, by the time I got home, I had an idea. I began writing.

It went fast. I completed the piece in a weekend.

Horace loved it, bought it. “It’s a real space opera,” he marveled, “but all the important action takes place completely offstage. A tour deforce!”

I rarely agreed with Horace, but I told him I was thoroughly with him on his last sentence.

The point being that, despite its disreputable origin, I have grown to be very fond of this story. I’m almost astonished to say that now I would rank it among my best.

And it is a space opera. Of a kind, anyway.

Written 1954 / Published 1954