Introduction to
THE MAN WHO WENT TO THE MOON—TWICE:

Originally, one of the lesser (but no less important) intents of this anthology was to commission and bring to the attention of the readers stories by writers well outside the field of speculative fiction. The names William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Alan Sillitoe, Terry Southern, Thomas Berger and Kingsley Amis were listed in my preliminary table of contents. The name Howard Rodman was also listed. Circumstances almost Machiavellian in nature prevented the appearance here of the former sextet. Howard Rodman is with us. I am honored.

You are a fan of Rodman's work if you watch television at all. Because, if you watch TV in even the most peripheral way, you do it to catch the best programs, and if that is the case you have seen Rodman's work. (A comment: how odd it seems to me that science fiction fans, the ones who choose to exist in dream worlds of flying skyways, cities of wonder, marvelous inventions, dilating doors, tri-vid and "feelies," are the ones who most vocally despise modern television. The bulk of the fans I have met, when they discover I spend part of my time writing for the visual media, rather superciliously tell me they seldom watch, as though watching at all might be considered gauche. How sad it must be for them, to see television, space travel and all the other predictions of Gernsbackian "scientifiction" turned over to the Philistines. I suppose, in a way, it's a small tragedy, like having been so hip for years that you knew Tolkien was great, and now suddenly finding every shmendrick in the world reading paperback editions of Lord of the Rings on the IRT. But it is a far, far better thing, I submit, to have TV as the mass media it is, even as gawdawful as it is ninety-six per cent of the time, than to relegate it to the hideously antiseptic fate intended for it by the s-f of 1928.)

Howard Rodman has been nominated for and won more awards for television drama than anyone currently working in the medium. His famous Naked City script, "Bringing Far Places Together," won Emmys and Writers' Guild awards not only for himself but for the series, the director and the stars. Students of exemplary teleplays will recall last season's Bob Hope-Chrysler Theater drama, "The Game with Glass Pieces." It was, in point of fact, Howard Rodman's style that set the tone for the best of both Naked City and Route 66 during their auspicious tenures on the channelways.

Howard Rodman was born in the Bronx, and decided at the age of ten to be a writer. He took that decision seriously at age fifteen and from fifteen to sixteen read a minimum of one volume of short stories daily; from sixteen to seventeen read only plays, five or six a day; and from seventeen to twenty-one he wrote 3000 words a day: short stories, scenes from plays, poems, narrative sequences, etc. He graduated from Brooklyn College and later did his graduate work at Iowa University. At twenty-one he went into the army (where among his assignments he was required to inspect the brothels of Lille as a sergeant in counterintelligence). He has had over a hundred and fifty short stories published, several hundred poems, forty one-act plays, four three-act plays (and has been included in volumes of best plays of the year). For the past ten years he has been active in radio, television and motion pictures. At forty-seven, Howard Rodman—big, hearty, incredibly witty and erudite Howard Rodman—the film buff, has been married, divorced and remarried to the lovely and talented actress Norma Connolly. They have four children, several of whom can be ranked as geniuses by the most stringent criteria.

I am particularly pleased that Howard is able to appear in this anthology, not merely because his story is something very different and very special from the others in this book, but for a number of secondary reasons, herewith noted: Long before I came to Hollywood, I was an admirer of Rodman's scripts. They seemed to me to embody the ideals a scenarist should strive for in a medium dedicated to drumming stench-deterrents for the hair, mouth, underarms and spaces between the toes. I made it a point to meet Rodman, within the first few months in Clown Town, and from him I learned an important lesson. A lesson any writer can use. Don't be afraid. That simple; don't let them scare you. There's nothing they can do to you. If they kick you out of films, do TV. If they kick you out of TV, write novels. If they won't buy your novels, sell short stories. Can't do that, then take a job as a bricklayer. A writer always writes. That's what he's for. And if they won't let you write one kind of thing, if they chop you off at the pockets in the market place, then go to another market place. And if they close off all the bazaars, then by God go and work with your hands till you can write, because the talent is always there. But the first time you say, "Oh, Christ, they'll kill me!" then you're done. Because the chief commodity a writer has to sell is his courage. And if he has none, he is more than a coward. He is a sellout and a fink and a heretic, because writing is a holy chore. That is what I learned from Howard Rodman.

Another reason for my delight at Rodman's inclusion among these pages is the tenor of the story he has told. It is a gentle story, seemingly commonplace and not very "dangerous." Yet when I first read it, and these thoughts occurred to me, I paused with the warning read it again signaling me from inside. Rodman is devious. So I read it again, and aside from the understatement of the handling, the pain of the concept struck me. He has attempted something very difficult, and in its own way unsettling. He has made a sage comment on the same subject which I commented upon, in the second paragraph of this introduction. (The part in parentheses.) It is the kind of story Heinlein used to write, and which Vonnegut has done several times, but which most speculative writers would not even consider. They are too far away in space. Rodman still has substantial ties with the here and now. And it is this concern (and affection) for the tragedy of the here and now that has prompted the story of the man who went to the moon—twice.

One final reason why Rodman's appearance here is a delight. He is a fighter, not merely a parlor liberal. His admonition to me never to be afraid was capped with an order to fight for what I had written. I've tried to do it, sometimes successfully. It's difficult in Hollywood. But my mentor, Howard Rodman, is the man who once threw a heavy ashtray at a man who had aborted one of his scripts, and had to be restrained from tearing the man's head from his shoulders. On another occasion he sent a very powerful producer, who had butchered one of his shows, a large package wrapped in black crêpe. Inside was a pair of scissors with a note that said Requiescat in Pace, and the name of the teleplay. There is a legend around the studios: if you aren't getting enough of a headache from Ellison writing for you, call in Rodman and work with the original item.

It is visible testimony to the quality of his work that Howard Rodman is one of the busiest writers in Hollywood.