Expanded Universe

FOREWORD

The editor who disliked science fiction (and me) but liked my sales grumbled to me, on my delivering my annual boys' novel, that she did wish that someone would write girls' stories. I answered, "Very well, I'll write a story for girls. When do you want it?"

She was simultaneously astonished, offended, and amused at the ridiculous and arrogant notion that a mere man could write stories for girls. So that's how Puddin' was born: I started writing first - person - female - adolescent stories - but not for that old harridan.

Since this is not the first of the Puddin' stories, let me introduce her. Her name is Maureen, her nickname derives from her weight problem. She is eternally an undergraduate on a small campus in Somewhere, U.S.A., where her father teaches anthropology smokes his pipe. Maureen has an unbearable younger brother (all younger brothers are unbearable; I should know, I was one).

I grew so fond of Maureen that I helped her to get rid of that excess weight, changed her name to "Podkayne," and moved her to Mars (along with her unbearable kid brother). And now and again she turns up under other names in other science fiction stories.

Nevertheless Maureen still attends classes on this campus in Never - Neverland. I had intended to do a full book of Puddin' short stories under the title MEN ARE EXASPERATING. I have enough stories for a fat volume hut as yet I have not written any of them down.

This campus never has riots. The girls are not "on the Pill." (Or if they are, the subject is not mentioned.) There is no drug problem. In short, I have described college life of a bygone day.

But don't misunderstand me. My teens were the Torrid Twenties and exactly the same things went on then as now.. . but were kept under cover. When I was a freshman in college, the nearest connection for marijuana was a drugstore a hundred yards off campus; for H or C it was necessary to walk another block. But bootleg liquor (tax-free) would be delivered on or off campus at any hour.

Did I avail myself of any of these amenities? None of your business, Buster!

As for sex, each generation thinks it invented sex,' each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England, the differences lie only in the degree of covering up - if any.

I may never publish the book MEN ARE EXASPERATING; I'm not sure it has a market and, at my age, there are more stories that I want to write (and are certain of publication) than I can possibly write before the black camel kneels at my door.

I hope you like Puddin'.