Now, you should know before I bore you with the details that I am totally unqualified to be a science fiction writer. Among the many qualifications I lack:

• I can't grow a beard without help--just an unsightly stubble that lingers and itches
• I am not a female
• I have never taught a college course anywhere
• I did not major in any scientific field
• I understand how to use a computer and am not intimidated by modern technology

With the basic qualifications out of the way--well, not out of the way, but rather so lacking as to make me the sore thumb at a science fiction convention--I should get on with my story.

This all starts with the request from the Convention Committee for me to appear as the keynote speaker at the Atlanta World Con many years ago and ends with this address before you thousands in attendance at Chicago World Con and millions online around the world .

Have you ever been broke, alone and hopelessly trapped in an occupation that despises you?

At times like those you will take hope from a handwritten note on a pre-printed rejection slip.

My heart fluttered when I checked the email and found a fine offer to keynote at Atlanta World Con; it included a very nice speakers fee, travel expenses, lodging and meals. Being broke at the time, wondering if the server would even accept a reply (my email normally consisted of requests to pay via direct account online bills that my over-the-limit credit cards rejected) the prospect of all of these paid expenses and the generous speaker's fee tempted honesty. I responded so fast neither I nor the committee happened to notice the particular piece of email was misdirected. It bounced into my box, the last resort of every misdirected or homeless spam on the net, through one of those Internet glitches. Honestly, after the bliss of being discovered passed I managed to look the gift horse through the teeth enough to spy the heading of the email. Let us just say, for the sake of argument, knowing that attorneys don't read science fiction, that I suspected that they actually wanted Laura Hamilton Feather and not me. No, really the committee wanted someone else scheduled years before who at the last moment died and whose name I can no longer remember.

Laura Hamilton Feather qualified beyond my most sincere hopes as a science fiction writer. In the ten years previous she walked away with more than a armful of nebulas, hugos, asimovs, cards, cheryhs and several other awards. After dropping out of MIT to devote herself full-time to her already skyrocketing writing career she taught both writing and historical astrophysics at several major universities and taken three turns as a visiting writer on NASA deepspace stations. She even looked as if she might manage a fairly respectable beard. By comparison--there was none. The only thing we shared in common was the last ten years of writing science fiction.

There again the comparison strained. My last ten years preceded a period of fifteen years when I seldom even read a word. When I first started writing the stars were Anson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, J. C. Cherryh. In those gloomy years I typed late into the night transfixed by the computer monitor and totally deluded. Those stories jumped from my fingers plotted in a sharp mind clearly aware of a total tradition of science fiction. I believed then someday one of these stories sent to one of those editors would find its way into some publication. As the rejection slips mounted and frustration grew I gradually faced what had been obvious to every editor, I was without a clue.

Did you really expect to hear my autobiography? I have no idea what got you this far into my little story. I see your faces and staring eyes intent on the Master's words and I wonder.

Be patient you will learn if you listen that I really don't care. Over the years including when I just gave up trying to reach you and let those stupid story ideas bang around my head pushing me past sanity, I learned what you think does not matter to me. Whether or not you like what I write does not matter to me. I am totally passed all of that. At this, at least, I have been successful. Though my intent has never been to force my philosophy down the throats of others, I claim a good deal of success in this regard. Pretty much, science fiction, its fans, readers, editors and publishers accept my philosophy. In those days they regarded my work with as much disdain as I them. After today...Who knows what you will think.

In short, just in case you are one of those listeners who have trouble with stories that contain more than one complicated character and thus have no idea what I just told you, I simplify for you: I wrote non-commercial stories that did not sell. To my credit though I kept on writing those stories. Writing preserved enough sanity to avoid the doctors or the morgue.

Question: Why does a suicidal personality avoid dangerous activities?

Let it go. Let go. Fall free.

Now, you see how these things happen. The really interesting part here is about the invite to speak at a science fiction convention which misdirected ended in my email box instead of where it actually should have gone and how I accepted knowing I was not the right person. Dishonesty. To get you to understand how this was a bit of a joke I explained all of this junk.

This is a good writers problem. Maybe I should ask ONE what to do here. Here before you, I am writing a story that isn't fiction and my listeners are characters in the story. As the writer it then becomes my job to direct all of my characters. How exactly do I give directions to my characters without boring them with details? You'll just have to go along for a bit. You can stop listening but then you are out of the story. I am not inclined to be forgiving on this point. Stop listening and you are out of the story. That is final. No excuses. Your bladder is not that full.

Packing my bag for the trip to Atlanta I came across in one of my drawers under my only dress shirt an old manuscript from my early days. Memory did not serve me well then, but I knew that this particular manuscript never found its way into any editors "read if I ever have time since it didn't come from a writer with a known name or agent and he or she is not related to anyone in my family or circle of friends" file. Toward the end of my early attempts at writing I sent everything to one editor first in the belief that the long delays surrounding his responses meant he actually read more than the first page. Long delays as it happens only mean the under staffed editor passed all of the manuscripts from this file to the would-be editors who like to hang around his office in hopes he might die of boredom or malnutrition or something and they being handy would fill the depression in his chair. These geeks would pick their noses and read when and if they could my stories. More often than not they would leave them stacked about their low rent apartments among the comic books and soda cans.

For the writers out there who didn't know this explains the mysterious stains and unusual odors which always accompany a returned manuscript.

This particular manuscript lacked all of that. More importantly, from the uniform printing, the lack of misspellings and the quality of paper this manuscript clearly emerged from a latter day production effort after the time hard earned money bought the kind of frills every writer must have to be successful. Something I read in how-to article in a writers magazine. Even if you do not know these things you should be able to guess this article taught that to get an editor's attention a writer must produce a polished manuscript. Two things wrong here:

1) If every writer followed their suggestions then there would be nothing unique about a manuscript to catch an editor's attention. They would all look the same. Neat, clean, the same. The only things about them that could possibly be different is the one thing that an editor drawing a manuscript from the hopeless pile would be unlikely to notice, the story. Remember he has all of those manuscripts from known writers or agents, family, friends or otherwise famous people. What makes you think he will even look at yours if it looks like all the rest? Think.

2) Stories submitted to these editors, if they get read at all, are usually read by some geek, freak with an urge to be a science fiction editor and thus hold and shape the future of science fiction by selecting the work of known writers, submissions from known agents, family members, friends or famous people. That geek freak picks his nose while reading your story. Cheap paper. Smudgy ink. Misspellings. These people deserve this. Why shouldn't they pay their dues?

There was further evidence. The manuscript hid in my drawer underneath my only dress shirt. Three times back in style that shirt despite some yellowing on the collar could have passed for new. This could easily turn into a detective story as I relate how I came to deduce that this manuscript had never been sent off. If you have been where I have then you already know. If you haven't then you are one of the listener characters in this story so I must direct you to understand.

An unpublished manuscript from an unknown writer values zero in the real world. The writer thinks it a treasure; no one else is interested. Once in a great while after an unknown writer writes enough stories that more than a few pass through the same nose picking freak geek's soda sticky hands that he actually recognizes the name they may in their delusion believe enough to pay attention as they read. Once, seldom, but occasionally, they might like a story. Any frustrated would be editor is by definition a frustrated would be writer with a large file of story ideas. Nobody at the editor's office, usually just the editor and a number of nose pickers, will notice that this one manuscript disappeared. Into the file it goes.

Two pages into this old manuscript I could not imagine I had written this work of art then or now. There was then no way this had ever found its way into those soda stained sticky hands. It was virgin.

More than that it was truly good, maybe even commercial. Instead of packing I spent the rest of the afternoon reading. The convention was two weeks off anyway. How long does it take to pack one shirt and borrow a tie anyway?

In the days following the discovery I faced a major problem. The manuscript could easily be that piece of work every writer dreams, believes, imagines to be trapped somewhere in their brain. Their reason for writing, if you will. Still trapped though by the miserable form of its creation. Yes, a few established, known writers with well known agents, family members and friends of editors still submitted manuscripts printed by ink jet printers on paper. The rest of the dirty unwashed host of writers submitted everything electronically so the manuscripts could be scanned for keywords, phrases, categorized, cataloged, and collated long before being run through the digital prereaders. Electronic readers sort and select what might be of interest to a human reader and a tiny fraction of this might end in the soda stained steaky hands of some freak geek would be editor. You can fool those prereaders and geeks and that is how guys like me made a meager living back then.

This masterpiece I thought must somehow be converted to a digital stream. My imagination ran wild. I tried to remember where the old computer might be. Perhaps the data on the harddrive could be recovered converted reprocessed to bio memory.... crazy thoughts...I could scan the pages in and run an OCR program...where would I find an OCR program? I wondered if that old scanner in the corner pawn shop still worked and if adapter cables existed. Perhaps a used infrared converter and receiver could be adapted...The ideas flowed like beer at a high school reunion. The beer though was getting a little stale.

Only one solution seemed of any real value. I could read the manuscript to my computer. Sure, I could force myself to read this work of art word-for-word without changing anything. I could also climb Mt. Everest and make a million dollars in one afternoon on the Internet, but only if I went to one of those pay per fantasy sites. This was totally ridiculous. Years of life stood between the kid that wrote this work and the writer he became. Already the manuscript grew unreadable with the many notes I jotted in the margins and between the perfectly double spaced lines. I could not leave it alone; finished years before the madness.

As a sideline to all of this, struggling young writers and curious fans ask one question over and again. Who do you, the great master, read? I don't. I try to avoid reading this stuff as it only gives me more ideas which I must write which in general are useless, non-commercial, and overly honest. You have all heard of the feud between a certain editor and myself. That started over one of these story ideas.

Perhaps the pretty girl in the next apartment, an exotic dancer, would read the manuscript for me? What a concept? She reads the manuscript, falls madly in love with the writer then discovers the author. We live happily ever after. The madness barely contained to my writing began to drive my life. Delusional.

Finally, the most daring of ideas blossomed. The rest, history now, could never have been predicted then. I stuffed the now smudged, dog-eared document with hand written notes painted over with the chalky cream from an almost dried out bottle of whiteout into a brown manila envelop from a very old stash of the same on the top shelf of my closet. After hours of search on the Internet I found the address--the real physical address of a publishing house. For two hours Internet access through my computer--who knows what damage he did--a neighborhood pimple popping hacker converted an old rejection email from a known agent into a notice of submission or something that someone might think was such and sent it ahead to the publisher. Myself, I hand delivered the manuscript to the publisher's office trying to act like a delivery person--no sense making delivery people mad with a complete description of how I walked to the nearest desk where someone looked busy and shoved the envelop under that nose until they accepted it.

Let it be enough that you listeners know that the manuscript rushed from desk to desk amid excited conversation until it finally went behind a door.

Back to the convention. By the time I got packed and ready to go two things happened. The people that organized the convention--it always seems to be the same people regardless of where the convention is, doesn't it?--had figured out that somehow they had the wrong writer. Possibly they became a little suspicious when I asked that the advance on the speaker's fee be transferred to my general account as cash? Could be that they wondered why such a well know successful science fiction writer did not use a speakers bureau or lived in a government sponsored rent control in the wrong part of New York. You never know about people like this. Perhaps my pimple popping hacker mishacked the email reply. Anyway their questions via email increased with each of my smoke screening responses. Faith faded in Atlanta. The other happening changed everything.

As fast as the published could dictate the gem, notice of the master piece I had hand delivered began to appear in their most prestigious ezine, "New Astounding Stories." Subscribers around the world began downloading that piece to their pocket readers at rates that threatened the security of the publisher's server. They began back ordering requests. That aged masterpiece found at the bottom of my drawer below my only dress shirt was a hit. The word Best-selling became associated with that odd title, "Ants in the Pants Planet." Amazon and other book downloaders posted messages across the net, "Titles of previous works by this author are currently out-of-stock. If you wish to order a particular title we will happily contact our sources on the net and email you when titles become available." What titles? Three different people who identified themselves as well known literacy agents sent email notifying me that my previous requests for representation had been accepted. A woman who said she was likely the great grand niece of Damon Knight, "a name a writer of my stature would certainly recognize," wanted to include several of my previously published short stories in her upcoming anthology. Would I "provide a list of recommended titles and names and dates of ezine publications?" She had no clue who I was. Both the Online Literary Review and Good Morning Online requested interviews. My service provider seeing the mail box fill with email sent another notice regarding the pending termination of my unpaid address.

Two other things happened.

The people in Atlanta sent a priority email through a secure server notifying me of the cash transfer of the speaker's fee in full and providing a password for the e-tickets. The organizers sent a note: “Please print and wear the attached name tag when arriving at the convention. We look forward to seeing you at the convention.” The exotic dancer next door knocked on my door asking to borrow a cup of sugar.

At last success rubbed against me in an elevator.

Of course, more than one thing left to be done: for the convention, I needed to buy a new dress shirt; send an email to my pimple popping hacker requesting a copy of the shareware program "Science Fiction Writing Made Simple 1.04." Using "Ants in the Pants" as a template I would crank out two sequels by convention time ready for the hungry publishers. Everything was just great.

History: (the real fans among you listeners will recall and rest need guidance again) The next five years flew past in a blur of sequels, trilogies, forwards, aftermaths, and reprints. Download numbers leaped ever upward as nebulas, hugos, asimovs, cards, cheryhs and several other awards attached themselves to titles under my name. A couple of publishers even requested I write forwards for authors I envied. A few editors paid to use my name on collections of stories assembled by their nose picking freak geek would be editor assistants. Two of those won Nebulas and launched the careers of new writers, mostly pen names for established writers and two freak geek would be editor-writers. I even learned to take offense when a reviewer tried to compare my early "work" to my "recent literary tour de force."

The pimple popping hack discovered the commercial software world and began marketing a program he developed to transfer the data stored on old spinner type harddrives to bio-block memory. The program unlocked the secrets of my old computer found in a pawn shop storage room not three blocks from my old government sponsored rent control. Over one hundred brand new stories to dole out at premium prices to the very best ezines. Playboy Ezine contracted for a whole series.

At first, I carefully process each story through the hacked version of "Science Fiction Writing Made Simple" thus generating five or six versions of the same story line which could be scattered about the ezines, anthologies, and downloaders. As time went on the sheer volume of work became too much for my agent who retired. Alone I began hiring nose pickers of my own. Young struggling writers sent their latest masterpiece for my review, we stole the best, ran them through a newly revised "Science Fiction Writing Made Simple 2.0" then sold them under various pen names most of which you would recognize--two won hugos.

Happy? You bet! Money, people, fame all clung to everything I touched. The exotic dancer moved into my penthouse apartment and we would have lived happily ever after if not for her girl friend. That story appeared on Enquirer.com and every distorted word was true. I learned to use other people as go-betweens so that my direct contacts with the press, public and fandom made my overly honest characteristics appear to be a persona of character.

For listener guidance, rich famous people can cop tudes and be admired for it. Fans and aspiring writers value an insult from a successful writer above a kind word from a nobody even when one is the other.

A hair follicle transplant cured the beard problem. Three universities provided doctorates with pseudo scientific sounding titles and one a chair in creative writing for which assistants were hired. A sex change operation was out-of-the-question. Too many groupies wanted to hang around the successful writer and as age set in my photos were hardly discernible from the real thing. NASA even called.

Then came the invitation to Chicago World Con. This extravaganza promised a celebration of popularity science fiction now enjoyed. After centuries isolated from the mainstream science fiction now held the lead in sells and popularity. No longer did the genre suffer the propellered beanie image or second class stature in literary circles. Science fiction was mainstream. Fantasy writers fled the genre. Fanzines turned commercial. Big Internet names bought all the ezines. Mainstream writers who avoided conventions began begging invitations. None but fools wrote editorials defining science fiction. Science fiction was.

Just then the madness over took me. One evening while pondering a stack of the latest recreations from previously published works, new sequels to old epics, and stolen stories remanufactured in my image, I found myself in front of the screen of the old computer typing. I was writing again. I could not believe how my mind raced. The ideas flowed. Nothing was safe. Of course, I knew what this meant. I considered retirement, seclusion, to emerge at a later date when the spotlight faded, but honest above all else and to myself when I could be, I knew that soon the truth would have to be told.

Now listener, I direct you to the story I have told. I ask but one thing but once, "Who lied to whom all those years?"