In the beginning, it was supposed to be a straightforward alien-encounter story – no literary flourishes, no profound

philosophical content, nothing more than a plain Jane, everything-accessible

In the beginning, it was supposed to be a straightforward alien-encounter story – no literary flourishes, no profoundIf I don’t sound too enthusiastic about the story, that’s because I wasn’t. I was writing it only as a favor to a longtime acquaintance and sometime friend named Bill Miller, who was forever founding – and later folding – magazines that plied various segments of the science-fiction market. He’d started at the hard-science end of the spectrum, and he’d been editing a magazine that specialized in sword and sorcery the last time I’d seen his name on a masthead.swats a universe – home run for all you retrograde 20th-century types – and is lionized as greatest man in the solar system.

By the time I finished cranking out the story, I was too tired to come up with a snappy postscript. I didn’t bother going to sleep, though. The clock read 5:31a.m., so I figured I’d be hearing from Bill Miller in a few minutes. The phone rang at a quarter to six.

“Eighteen cents a word,” he said without preamble.

“Twenty, or don’t even bother.”

“Nineteen.”

I hung up. The phone rang. I picked it up.

“Okay, twenty cents, you highway robber,” he said. “Here’s the deal: I showed the edited stories to my publisher, and he really liked them. Except he wants to see a horror story, too.”

“You mean an alien-encounter horror story?”

“No, a straight horror story.”

“I haven’t written a straight horror story in forever.”

“Look, I’m begging you, Jerry. Please. You want to do killer ghosts in Toyland, that’s fine. You want to do Anne of Green Gables meets the Wolf Man at Mandalay, that’s fine too. Just give me a horror story, any horror story. You’ve got until tomorrow.”

I thought it over. Miller must have thought I was negotiating. “All right, already,” he said. “Twenty-one cents a word.”

I kept thinking. “Sweet Jesus, you’re a hard case,” he said. “Twenty-two cents a word, and that’s absolutely, positively my last offer.”

And then it hit me. “Tell you what,” I said. “Make it twenty-five cents a word and I’ll give you 4,200 words by noon.”

“Noon tomorrow?”

“Noon today.”

“Done.”yuck.

The good news was that I was going to be paid reasonably well for this drivel. I planned to open with an introductory section establishing who Vothar was, segue into a flashback about the quest, then return to the present and close with a kicker. Piece of cake.

I sat down at my trusty word processor and began writing something along the lines of: Once upon a time, in days of yore, et cetera, et cetera, there lived a great prince called Vothar the Brave, son of him, father of her, servant of this goddess, drinking buddy of that god, and so on and so forth, and basically the most famous person in the history of history. But Vothar now lay on his deathbed, with his loyal wife, Melea, by his side. And as he awaits his summons to the land of the non-living, he ruminates over the events of his life. In his mind’s eye, he sees his coronation and his great battle against the Western barbarians and his victory march through the grand halls of Goroholla. But clearest of all the images is his memory of his immortal single combat with the half-man, half-dragon beast, the Anodyne.

Bang, zoom, to the flashback. Like Jefferson, Vothar’s got an entire nation waiting for him. And like Jefferson, he’s discovered he’s not equal to the task. In fact, he’s so terrified of the Anodyne, not to mention his army of nasty, little (and as-yet-unnamed) creatures, that all he’s been able to do for the past four days is pound down endless goblets of highly intoxicating mead and relieve his bladder. He’s just begun weeping in despair when an alien appears and says to him, “Hey, big guy, what’s the downer?” Together, they kill the Anodyne. Vothar rescues Melea, returns triumphantly to Kronos, is crowned king of the land and lives happily ever after.