Paths to the Stars

1. The Minstrel-1

The Minstrel

I chose this as the first story to present because its central image, of a youngster gazing longingly at the silver spires of starships, aching to ride them into space, is a metaphor for the way I reacted to science fiction as a young reader. The stories of Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke and Norton and Silverberg and Simak and many, many others were, in a very real sense, my shining starships—my paths to the stars. Kriss’s longing in “The Minstrel” was, and is, my longing. It’s no wonder this was one of the first science fiction stories I wrote, and one of the first I sold. It appeared in the long-defunct teen magazine JAM, sometime in the early 1980s.

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THE MUSIC SANG OF THE INFINITE DARK and the suns that burn within it. It shimmered like starlight on alien seas, and whispered with the voices of strange winds.