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This book preserves a few of the many articles and reviews I have written over the last few years. My passport describes me as ‘Writer and Critic,’ because a fair proportion of my writing has always been non-fiction. Non-fiction has a role to play in an author’s life. It is to fiction what target practice is to a soldier: it keeps his eye in in preparation for the real thing.

For the record, these are the various places where the pieces originally appeared.

‘Preparation for What?’ in The Fiction Magazine, 1983; ‘Long Cut to Burma’ (as ‘Drawn Towards Burma’) in The Fiction Magazine, 1982, here revised; ‘Old Bessie’ first told at a Halloween party in Chris Priest’s house in Harrow, October 1984.

‘Science Fiction’s Mother Figure’ (as ‘Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’) in Science Fiction Writers, edited by E.F. Bleiler, Simon & Schuster, 1981; ‘The Immanent Will Returns’ (as ‘Olaf Stapledon’) in the Times Literary Supplement, 1983; ‘The Downward Journey’ in Extrapolation, 1984; ‘A Whole New Can of Worms’ originated in a speech delivered at the City Lit on 9 January 1982, later published in Foundation, 1982; ‘Peep’ formed the Introduction to James Blish’s Quincunx of Time, published by Avon Books, 1983; ‘A Transatlantic Harrison, Yippee!’ was printed in the programme book for Novacon 12, held in Birmingham, England in 1982.

‘The Atheist’s Tragedy Revisited’ is a new piece. ‘The Pale Shadow of Science’ was delivered as a talk to the British Association for the Advancement of Science during their annual meeting at Norwich, 11 September 1984, and an abridged edition was published in The Guardian newspaper, 13 September 1984; ‘A Monster for All Seasons’ in Science Fiction Dialogues, edited by Gary Wolfe, Academy Press, 1982; ‘Helliconia: How and Why’ has not yet been published anywhere.

My thanks go to the committee of Norwescon 8, to all my friends attending that illustrious event, and in particular to Jerry Kaufman, Donald G. Keller, and Serconia Press.

This volume is divided into three sections, autobiographical, followed by articles on individual writers, and articles on more general aspects of science fiction.

This section is the most fun. Here are a few of the experiences which went to shape me as a writer. An American audience will surely find them very strange, especially when they come to the piece about the haunted house in which my family once lived.

These pieces have been published here and there in England. They are an approach towards an autobiography which I intend one day to write … once I have set a few more pressing novels down on paper.