Doing What You Wanted To Do Was

[science Fiction Is] That Class Of Prose Narrative Treating Of A Situation That Could Not Arise In The World We Know, But Which Is Hypothesised On The Basis Of Some Innovation In Science Or Technology, Or Pseudo-science Or Pseudo-technology, Whether Human Or Extra-terrestrial In Origin. It Is Distinguished From Pure Fantasy By Its Need To Achieve Verisimilitude And Win The 'willing Suspension Of Disbelief' Through Scientific Plausibility.

To Refer Even In Passing To Unpublished Or Struggling Authors And Their Problems Is To Put Oneself At Some Risk, So I Will Say Here And Now That Any Unsolicited Manuscripts Or Typescripts Sent To Me Will Be Destroyed Unread. You Must Make Your Way Yourself. Why You Should Be So Set On The Nearly Always Disappointing Profession Is A Puzzling Question.

The World That Seemed So Various And New, Well, It Does Contract. One's Burning Desire To Investigate Human Behavior, And To Make, Or Imply, Statements About It, Does Fall Off. And So One Does Find That Early Works Are Full Of Energy And Also Full Of Vulgarity, Crudity, And Incompetence, And Later Works Are More Carefully Finished, And In That Sense Better Literary Products. But . . . There's Often A Freshness That Is Missing In Later Works--for Every Gain There's A Loss. I Think It Evens Out In That Way.

Growing Older, I Have Lost The Need To Be Political, Which Means ... The Need To Be Left. I Am Driven To Grudging Toleration Of The Conservative Party Because It Is The Party Of Non-politics, Of Resistance To Politics.

It Is Not Extraordinary That The Extraterrestrial Origin Of Women Was A Recurrent Theme Of Science Fiction.