Introduction to
THE TEST-TUBE CREATURE, AFTERWARD

Joan Bernott is a remarkable young lady. She is twenty-five years old, has appeared in two of the four prestigious issues of Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker's paperback magazine Quark, and this was the first story she sold, though the other two got into print faster.

I met Joan at the 1969 Clarion Workshop in SF & Fantasy, where (by rough count and intuitive perceptions) the number of men in desperate love with her was eleven. Shortly after the Clarion term, she showed up here in California and stayed a few days at the Ellison stop on the Underground Railroad. No inferences are to be drawn from this: the list of ex-Clarionites who've lived here for varying periods of work-time include Gerard F. Conway, James Sutherland, Ed Bryant, Neil Shapiro, Lucy Seaman and Sandra Rymer (all of whom, incidentally, have sold professionally).

I say remarkable for any number of reasons, most of which I'll pass by in this introduction; not the least of which, however, is that she comes out of amateur writing almost full-blown, with a strength and approach very much her own. One of the others is that she instilled in me, in a remarkably short time, a dislike of such towering dimensions that I must confess only a story of unimpeachable excellence could have bought her into this book. Such a story is the one hereafter entered, and all that remains is Ms. Bernott to speak for herself:

"I was born in Michigan in 1946, grew up in Detroit, and moved to the country several years ago. I am a chronic summertime traveler, to Europe, Canada, throughout the United States, and expect to pay an extended visit to Central America next year.

"I have a B.A. in political science from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and am presently working as a free-lance writer and theatre photographer. I expect to begin work on a degree in criminal law at about the time that Again, Dangerous Visions, is published."