Introduction
to
THE MILK OF PARADISE
This is the last introduction in the book. I have been at it, more off than on, for three months. It looks to be about 60,000 words of copy. That's a novel. For those of you who hate my introductions, you'll have decided to forego them all to this point, and you'll have no carp because you're paying for about 250,000 words of stories and the extra sixty grand of words is thrown in as a bonus. But for those of you who like to sense the people behind the fictions, I hope it has been as stimulating and pleasant an experience for you as it has for me. But in no way as exhausting.
Keep watch, there'll be a final volume in this trilogy, as I've noted elsewhere herein. It'll be titled The Last Dangerous Visions and the name is intended to be taken literally.
But for now, the best has been saved for the last.
In an earlier introduction I made sport of the concept of holding an anthology's strongest entry for the closeout spot. I did it in that introduction for the humorous effect. (What's that? Well, you're not so hot, yourself, smartass.) In Dangerous Visions I knew my best pick was Samuel R. Delany's award-winning " . . .Aye, and Gomorrah." When I bought it, Chip Delany hadn't published many short stories, though his novels were already coming to prominence. So it wasn't an award-winner then. But it was quite clearly the eye-opener of the book—though Phil Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage" was so close there wasn't air between them. It just howled award-winner. And so it was.
I kept hoping, as I assembled A,DV, for another smasher like the Delany, for the rideout position here. For many months good stories came in, some even breath-catchers—the Lupoff, the Vonnegut, the Filer, others—but not one that propelled itself, shoving aside all other contenders, into this slot. Then James Tiptree's story came to my desk.
I had been reading Tiptree for some time. He's a fairly recent addition to the corps of sf writers, and he hadn't had all that much published—not even a novel as of this writing—but what I'd seen had impressed me considerably, and so I wrote asking for a submission.
In came "The Milk of Paradise."
I simply could not believe I had been given the chance to buy a story that stunning. That kind of thing always winds up in some other guy's hands, and he becomes known as the editor who published such-and-such by so-and-so. But here it was, and it was mine, all mine, and without a glance at any of the other stories it went past go, collected all the marbles, avoided jail, and nestled here in signoff country. It was the big winner, the grand finale, the "Saints Go Marching In" with all horns blaring and emotional and intellectual pinwheels and luck had held. As I predicted earlier in this collection that Lupoff's novella would cop the mid-length awards, so I now stake what little rep I have left that this Tiptree story will cop the short story awards. And the sf world at large will realize what those who've read this story in manuscript and galley have come to realize: we have a new Giant in the genre.
Tiptree is the man to beat this year.
Wilhelm is the woman to beat, but Tiptree is the man.
All of this ferocity of flack is offered not merely because I am so high on this story, but because it is the favored spot, as said, and because, ironically, James Tiptree refuses to provide any personal data on himself.
That he lives in the state of Virginia and does a good deal of traveling (for a purpose I don't know) is all I have on him.
His reasons for remaining private seem to me deeply and sincerely motivated, so I won't defy them. But as a mark of a writer who may not even suspect how good he is—and for that reason may be that good—here is an excerpt from the letter that accompanied return of the signed contracts for this marvelous, memorable, goodbye-to-A,DV story. Here is Tiptree:
" . . .You have given me to think about the value, to an editor, of an author with no personal data, no desire to be quotes 'showcased,' and every intention of impersonating a Döppler shift if threatened with anything like awards. And who kicks over displays with his name on the cover. It had never, you see, occurred to me that such would happen. I had planned on several years of quietly collecting rejection slips. And then came Fred Pohl who understood and never made a fuss. Now he has gone and probes are coming in all around the horizon and for reasons which I trust are quite unclear they cannot get answered. What to do? A pseudonym and a P.O. box and start over?"