(Why this S. and S.? Well, growing up has apparently been a constant process of growing up so far as I’m concerned. I now rank Truman very high in my opinion of U.S. presidents, a couple of micrometers or so behind Abraham Lincoln.)
I had also, years back, been very much impressed with the early science fiction of A.E. van Vogt. His “Black Destroyer” and “Discord in Scarlet” had been among my favorites when it came to stories about aliens. But when I read his The World of Null-A, however, I had immediately wondered, “Why limit it to non-Aristotelian logic? Why not non-Platonic politics? There’s the rub in our social history ever since the fifth century B.C!” Now, in 1947, I remembered that overlook of van Vogt’s. I worked that into the story and used it as a title.
I wrote and rewrote the story, intending it for The New Yorker. When I was seventeen, I had sent The New Yorker a cycle of stories that perhaps only an acned seventeen-year-old could write—“The Adventures of God” and “The Further Adventures of God Junior.” Instead of the expected printed rejection slip, I had received a postcard from the editor, Harold Ross (Harold Ross, himself, in his own handwriting!), inviting me to come up and see him about the stories. I went there in my best—and only—blue serge suit, seeing myself as the new Perelman, the latest Thurber, the latter-day Robert Benchley.
I didn’t even get to Ross’s office. He came to me outside, in the smallish reception room. He talked to me for a few minutes, asking me what I read, what other things I had written, just why I had set myself to write “The Adventures of God.” Then he handed me back the pieces I had sent in and touched me lightly on the shoulder. “We don’t need these,” he said. “But keep punching, keep writing. We’ll be publishing you one day.” And he watched me take the elevator down.
But I went home with the virus in me. No matter where I published first, no matter what book awards I might win, I knew I must fulfill Harold Ross’s promise—I must one day appear in The New Yorker.
Now, at last, in 1950 (I had been potschkeying with the story for three years) I felt I had the wherewithal to fulfill that promise. I took it to my agent, told him of the market it must go to. He read it and shrugged. “Could be,” he said.
Then, the next day, he called me and told me he’d sent it to Damon Knight’s new science-fiction magazine, Worlds Beyond.
Damon had liked it a lot and had immediately bought it for a hundred dollars.
“A hundred dollars!” I wept. “I intended it for The New Yorker.”
“A hundred dollars definite,” he said, “is better than The New Yorker maybe. You need the money to eat on.”