The Last Defender of Camelot

INTRODUCTION

Though it is contrary to my general practice to introduce my own works, I decided to say a few words to go before this collection and some before each story itself because I have put this one together out of materials drawn from the beginning, middle and recent sections of the eighteen-year period I have been writing. I have changed during that time, a condition I share with the world around me, and I redden now or blanche (as the case my be) to read over much that I once considered adequate. For this reason, there are dozens of stories that I prefer keeping interred beneath bright covers in yellowing sheets, stories that 1 will never willingly see reprinted. I feel some affection for the ones I have gathered here, however, and I will say some things about them in the proper places.

The nature of my work and my working habits shifted radically in the late 60's, when I went in more heavily for the writing of novels. I had started out as a short story writer, and I still enjoy writing short stories though I no longer do nearly as many as I used to in a year's time. The reason is mainly economic. I went fulltime in the late 60's, and it is a fact of writing life that, word for word, novels work harder for their creators when it comes to providing for the necessities and joys of existence. Which would sound cold and cynical, except that I enjoy writing novels, too.

I have no desire to explain, attempt to justify or apologize for anything that I have written. I have always felt that a story should be able to deal with such matters itself. My individual forepieces are intended only to place them within the context of my own evolving experience —which makes this an autobiographical work for me, if not for anyone else.

So, to even things up and answer a number of requests, I'll tell you a little about myself (purely subjective, not dust jacket material)—

If I couldn't write worth a damn, I think I'd like to own a hardware store. I've long been fascinated by the enormous varieties of tools used to maintain our society, as well as the clips, hinges, pins, brads, screws, pulleys, wires, chains, clamps and pipes that hold it together. Not to mention the putty, piaster, cement and paint that keep it looking well io places. Even more than a book store, where I probably wouldn't get to read much anyway, I believe that I could have been fairly happy m a good general hardware shop, But then, I would probably open late and stay open late because I'm a night person- I prefer sunsets to sunrises. I pick up steam in the late hours. I've probably done most of my best writing after midnight.

There is a group of writers living within about a 100mile diameter circle around here who get together once a month for lunch. On one such occasion, Stephen Donaldson asked me what book by someone else I wished I had written. I gave him a quick answer which seemed appropriate at the moment. I thought about it later, though, and changed my mind. Something like War and Peace or Ulysses, while impressive or dazzling, massively tragic or comic and invested with tons of scholarly and lay mana would only be egotistical choices, not things that I could have enjoyed writing as well as enjoyed having written— if I were able. I got it down to two books—one tragic, one comic — and I couldn't decide between them: Malraux's Man's Fate and Norman Douglas' South Wind. I have nothing deeply philosophical to say about either of them here, just a wistful bit of self-revelation and an attempt to answer Steve's question honestly in a place where I am talking about myself, anyway.

The most encouraging thing I have seen in recent years was nothing at all. That is to say, nothing where I had expected to see something. Back m 1975, I visited Trinity Site, which is open to the public one day a year. It had been some thirty years since the first atomic bomb was detonated over that hot, dusty, windy plain. A long line of cars was met by a military escort at a shopping center north of Alamogordo and taken some seventy miles out into the White Sands Missile Range. We finally parked, disembarked and walked to Ground Zero. There was realty nothing to see. I had read how that first blast had left a crater of fused aluminum silicates twenty-five feet deep and a quarter-mile across. It was gone. The desertwinds had filled it in, the desert plants (unmutated) had taken root above it. The radiation level was only slightly above normal background. The place looked pretty much like parts of my backyard. After a moment's disappointment at the absence of a spectacle following the long drive, I suddenly felt elated as I realized how completely the earth had recovered in the span of a single generation, Life's resilience.

Some years ago, a scientist who was planning on beaming some television pictures outward, in an attempt to communicate something concerning us and our ways to whatever might be watching the late show, asked me to suggest some of the content for the program. Along with a lot of predictable technical and social stuff, I recall suggesting a symphony orchestra with closeups of the individual instruments being played, sailboats and—I believe—a flight of hot air balloons—as these seemed three sorts of objects where form has been so perfectly and uniquely married to function that our tools have become works of art—which I suppose puts even my esthetic thinking into a kind of Platonic hardware store.

I enjoy being a writer and I even like the paperwork. That's enough about the author. Here are the stories.