Expanded Universe

FOREWORD

In April 1962 I received a letter from the advertising agents of Hoffman Electronics: They had a wonderful idea - SF stories about electronics, written by well-known SF writers, just long enough to fill one column of Scientific American or Technology Review or such, with the other two thirds of the page an ad for Hoffman Electronics tied into the gimmick of the story. For this they offered a gee - whiz word rate - compared with SF magazines.

A well - wrought short story is twice as hard to write as

a novel; a short - short is at least eight times as hard - but

one that short... there are much easier ways of making

a living. I dropped them a postcard saying, "Thanks but

I'm busy on a novel." (True - GLORY ROAD)

They upped the ante. This time I answered, "Thanks and I feel flattered - but I don't know anything about electronics." (Almost true.)

They wrote back offering expert advice from Hoffman's engineers on the gimmick - and a word rate six times as high as The Saturday Evening Post had paid me.

I had finished GLORY ROAD; I sat down and drafted this one - then sweated endlessly to get it under 1200 words as required by contract. Whereas I had written GLORY ROAD in 23 days and enjoyed every minute of it. This is why lazy writers prefer novels.