In the Problem Pit

Introduction: Science-Fiction Games

Choosing which stories to put in an anthology is a lot like being asked which two of my four children should go into a "best of the family" collection. Like most writers, I try to maintain a pose of public professionalism. Also like most writers, in fact I bleed and die with everything I write. The stories don't always turn out to be masterpieces. I will go farther than that: I have written some stories that by anybody's standards, including my own, are awful. (They comprise a thick wad of wastepaper in my file cabinet, or at least the ones that didn't get published anyway do.) But in no case is it the story's fault, it is only mine. And whatever I privately know, it gives me some kind of pain to admit to anyone that this child is in any way deficient, and almost as much pain to claim that this other child is better than the rest.

So I have used several sets of criteria in picking out the contents of this volume: some are personal favorites, some are new, and some are that special kind of sf I call "science-fiction games."

And to make it possible for vou to know what I mean by a science-fiction game, I am also including an essay on the subject at the end of the book. It may not explain all of these particular stories, but I hope it will go some way toward explaining why I, and a lot of other people like me, have considered science fiction not a bad thing to devote our lives to.

Frederik Pohl

Red Bank, New Jersey November, 1974