Free Before They Were Giants by James L. Sutter Page A

still holds up as well; it mirrors the larger conflicts between the haves and have-nots, and between the search for knowledge and the clinging to status-quo.
     
    If you were writing this today, what would you do differently? What are the story’s weaknesses, and how would you change them?
     
    Of course, we know a lot more today than we did in 1960 about the realities of spacewalks and orbital construction. They are much more intricate than I depicted them in the story
     
    What inspired this story? How did it take shape? Where was it initially published?
     
    “A Long Way Back” was published in i960, in Amazing Stories, which was then edited by Cele Goldsmith. At this distance in time, I can’t recall what inspired the story. I do remember that it was fairly easy for me to write: the words just seemed to flow out naturally. I offered it at the first Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop that I attended; it was received with faint praise.
     
    Where were you in your life when you published this piece, and what kind of impact did it have?
     
    I was married, with two adopted children, living in suburbia in the Boston area. I had just started a full-time “day job” as a science writer at the Avco Everett Research Laboratory, where I worked for the next 12, years, until I was selected to edit Analog Science Fiction magazine after the death of John W. Campbell. Publication of “A Long Way Back” started my career in writing for science fiction magazines. I soon had a cover story in Amazing, began to sell fiction to Campbell at Analog, and wrote a long series of nonfiction articles about extraterrestrial life for Amazing.
     
    How has your writing changed over the years, both stylistically and in terms of your writing process?
     
    I’m much more a novelist than a short-story writer. Somehow I find it easier, and more comfortable, to write novels than short fiction. Reading “A Long Way Back” so many years after it was published, I see that my style hasn’t changed all that much. I still try to write clearly and naturalistically. I feel that, especially in science fiction, where there is so much for the reader to swallow, the writing style should be as easy to comprehend as possible.
     
    What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
     
    It’s important—vital—to have something to say. Writers should get out and live in the real world, observe real people, learn the rhymes and rhythms of the way people speak and behave. Science fiction actually isn’t about the future, or about technology, or about anything except human beings loving, hating, fearing, hoping. The characters may be in strange and alien surroundings, but good science fiction is first and foremost about people—the same as all good fiction.
     
    Any anecdotes regarding the story or your experiences as a fledgling writer?
     
    Well, shortly after “A Long Way Back” was published I received a phone call from Isaac Asimov. We both lived in the Boston area at that time and we were socially friendly. Isaac told me that Cele Goldsmith had asked him to write a nonfiction series for Amazing about extraterrestrial life. Isaac blithely told me that he informed Cele that he was too busy to do it, but his good friend Ben Bova would tackle the job, and Ben knew more about the subject than he (Isaac) did. I nearly dropped the phone and fainted. Isaac cheerfully explained that he would tell me everything he knew about extraterrestrial life, and surely I must know a thing or two that he didn’t, so I would know more about the subject than he did! Cele did indeed ask me to do the series, Isaac did indeed tell me all he knew, and the series helped to establish my name in the science fiction audience.
     
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    ~ * ~
     
    Possible to Rue
    by Piers Anthony
     
     
    I
     want a pegasus, Daddy,” Junior greeted him at the door, his curly blond head bobbling with excitement. “A small one, with white fluttery wings and an aerodynamic tail