2200 Fifth Avenue
New York, N. Y.
Dear Fred,
Well, here's a new story. I've cleared it with Joe ... he says it's okay to use his name; you know his sense of humor. I've used your name, too, but you can change it if you want to, being the shy retiring sort you are.
Frankly, I'm a little dubious about the yarn. It's the result of last Friday's poker-session.... I actually did have the déjà vu sensation, as you'll recall. On the way home I stopped in to pick up a chaser, feeling tired as all hell (like I always do—these long grinds are too much for me, I guess, just like the guy in the story) and the idea came to me to slap the old "we are fodder" angle into the thing as it happened and write it up.
But it's still an old plot. And one angle is left unexplained: how is the narrator able to know all about the slizzers and write about them after Joe gives him the déjà vu treatment?
Well, maybe the readers won't mind. I've gotten away with bigger holes than that. Try it on Bob Lowndes ... I still owe him on that advance. It's up his alley, hope-a-hope.
Jerry
Oct. 22, 1952
Jerome Bixby