Introduction to
AND THE SEA LIKE MIRRORS

There is a vast difference between being an "unknown" writer, and being an "amateur" writer. It is hardly a subtle difference, yet most unpublished pencil-pushers find it impossible to understand the distinction. Not understanding is pernicious. It leads people who might otherwise be utterly happy as shoe clerks or computer programmers or dental technicians to wasted lives of unfulfilled dreams, pounding typewriters and scribbling in journals, and never ever finding the right words. The words that make a story or a screenplay or a play something special. So someone will want to buy it and stake an editorial reputation on it, and pay the highest possible compliment for the use of it: a check of money. That says, "You may be 'unknown,' but you are not 'amateur.' You have a talent, and your talent has created a thing of special properties that takes the reader somewhere he has never been before. I love it, and I want to publish it, and I want to be associated with it; I want to let some of the magic of this special thing rub off on me by my act of presenting it." That is the compliment, and it is hard-won. Failing to receive that compliment, thousands of amateurs every year send their amateur stories to magazines and anthologies, send their amateur plays to producers, send their amateur teleplays to agents and studios . . .and die when rejection follows. They have failed to perceive the disparity between amateur and unknown. They believe that being the latter is inherently noble, somehow umbilically linked with greatness, never realizing that if that linkage exists—if it exists, and not for a moment will I admit it does—but if it does, never understanding that being amateur severs the umbilicus. To be unknown is simply to be unknown. To be an amateur is to be tone-deaf, without rhythm, color-blind. It is as far from the state in which the compliment can be won as the chicken is from the eagle. Both are fowl, yet one will forever peck at the dirt, and the other will soar to mountaintops. They scrawl their dreams in journals, they pound on into the night behind typewriters, and they die when their dreams are rejected, never understanding that the amateur is doomed never to find the words.

Greg Benford was, for a long time, unknown. He was never an amateur. He was unpublished, but he was ready. He wrote for fan magazines and he sent off manuscripts to the professional journals, but for a long time he was unpublished: he was unknown. But he was no amateur. He only needed the compliment to firm him up, to send him along, to put his dreams before readers.

In 1965, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction ran a poem by Doris Pitkin Buck (whose dangerous vision will appear in the third volume of this trilogy) in which the cases were made for the Univac and the unicorn, and it was hinted that proliferation of the former would spell doom for the latter. So intriguing was the idea, that the editor of F&SF initiated a contest for unpublished writers, soliciting stories in which both a Univac and a unicorn figured prominently.

There were many entries. (I've been working on mine for seven years, and one day soon may complete it.) The winner of the contest was Greg Benford. At which point he was not only not an amateur, he was also not unknown.

Since that time he has sold a number of stories and articles, and a novel, Deeper than the Darkness (Ace, 1970). (As a novelette, the story was both Hugo & Nebula finalist in 1970.) He regularly contributes a column on the science in science fiction to Amazing Stories.

"And the Sea Like Mirrors" is a fine story. I love it, and I want to publish it, and I want to be associated with it; I want to let some of the magic of this special thing rub off on me by my act of presenting it.

And having done so, all that remains is to present Mr. Gregory Benford.

"I was born in a small town in southern Alabama in 1941. Parents were schoolteachers but my father was away during the War and in 1946 joined the Army as a career. Thus my twin brother and I were hauled to various exotic and chaotic parts of the world, including Japan, Germany, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma. The effects of all this on my psyche are unknown, but it may have been enough to send me over the deep end and into the morass of science fiction.

"I suppose I was always more interested in the science in sf when I was a teenager; I'm probably one of the thousands who have been recruited to science & engineering by Heinlein's juveniles and a few other occasional books. At any rate I became interested in physics in high school, took a bachelors degree in it in 1963, moved to California and obtained my Masters in 1965 from the University of California. In 1967 I married Joan Abbe, of an old Boston family, and three months later (Nov) got my PhD from UC (La Jolla). There are a number of miscellaneous honors & stuff strewn along the path, though I don't think they mean a damn thing: Phi Beta Kappa, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, some scholarships.

"At the moment I'm doing research (I'm a theoretical physicist) at the University of California and living in Laguna Beach.

"I do a fair number of things. I surfed for years at La Jolla, have done some scuba diving (went on my second Caribbean jaunt last November), have some interest in ancient civilizations, travel a great deal (spent a good amount of time in a lot of European countries), fairly active politically, try to know as much about everything as possible, prefer trees and quiet and thus will probably become a lovable eccentric by the time I'm 40, love my wife, read everything.

"I started writing a few stories in 1964 while a graduate student at La Jolla and won a short story contest in F&SF in 1965. Sold them 3 stories and quit to finish my thesis. I started a fanzine called Void with my brother (who is now an experimental physicist) when I was 14, and continued it with various coeditors (including Terry Carr and Ted White) until I was 21. I've written a lot of stuff for fanzines about sf, but didn't think it was worth writing the sort of thing that was being published until the recent resurgence in the field. I don't think of myself as a Writer, but as a guy who writes on the side. My life is oriented toward being creative, which is why I like to do research.

"A good deal of the material in 'And the Sea Like Mirrors' is drawn from survival instruction I've had, although some of the things included are the subject of controversy (like drinking sea water) so they shouldn't be taken as the final word.

"Hobbies: drinking wine, playing all racquet games, hiking, contemplating inanimate objects, mysticism, oriental religions, astrophysics."