Author Name:

Author Description I began reading science fiction in my teens and my twenties. Favorites at that time were Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Bradbury, Clarke, the hard-core science fiction writers. But I also found Anne McCaffrey and her dragon rider sagas and Marion Zimmer Bradley with her female point of view of the Merlin and King Arthur stories. These authors delved more into emotions and the possibilities of telepathy. The women writers grew even stronger when Ursula K. Le Guin published The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969. This novel made the best use of science fiction's ability to discuss difficult and controversial subjects through the use of symbolic, future or imaginary scenarios, or non-human depictions. The idea of people not being physically confined to one sexual choice seemed exhilarating and revolutionary.<br /><br />I grew up in the 1950s during the McCarthy era when there was a great deal of political repression and fear. Science Fiction was a useful means of voicing an opinion without causing a mainstream backlash. Television and film also used Science Fiction to reach this goal. I have been, and will always be, a great fan of the original Star Trek series and their following movies and later series. They stretched the political and humanistic boundaries while presenting refreshing story lines and intimate relationships.<br /><br />Recently, while watching reruns of Quantum Leap and Xena Warrior Princess, I was reminded of the great scope of political and humanistic issues that science fiction was willing to explore. Such issues as institutionalized racism, discrimination against the disabled, war and peace, violence, gender discrimination and the need for equal rights for women, among others, are directly presented under the guise of great story lines. Xena was one if the earliest shows to depict physically and emotionally powerful women in an intimate relationship with the wide range of emotions that can develop between two people.<br /><br />In 1967 I began writing science fiction short stories. I sent stories to the science fiction magazines of that time, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction (which pioneered changing the focus of science fiction to social issues rather than technology), and New Worlds (which, in its turn, pioneered a new wave style of writing). I got the standard rejection letters until finally I received a personal rejection letter encouraging me to keep writing.<br /><br />At that time, well before the internet, I started a small printed fanzine, called The Seedling, using the upstairs neighbor's mimeograph machine. It was a prehistoric process in which I had to type everything on specially prepared stencil paper. Once typed, the stencil was wrapped around an ink-filled drum of a rotary machine. Each page had to be individually rolled and printed. Besides my own work, several other aspiring writers were printed including a short piece by Dean Koontz in the same year I think he made his first professional sale.<br /><br />And then came the announcement that the first ever writing workshop for new science fiction writers was to take place in Clarion, Pennsylvania, the summer of 1968. I felt propelled towards it, as if it was inevitable that I go, and had nothing to do with my own will or choice. There was going to be a different famous writer teaching each week, including such notables as Harlan Ellison, Fritz Lieber, Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight. I immediately signed up for the first two-week segment in June 1968. <br /><br />In the first class being taught by Harlan Ellison he attacked my story, ridiculed it for using the word undulating. I fought back, staying up all night to write an entirely different story. I handed the story to Harlan the next morning and went to sleep. When I came back downstairs later that day everybody was grinning and clapping. I had sold my first short story to Harlan for his next anthology, Again, Dangerous Visions.

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