Timothy Zahn - Star Song and Other Stories

For Dr. Stanley Schmidt: Who, 24 years ago, rescued me from the slush pile.

Thanks, Stan.

I've always liked short stories. I've especially always liked short story collections.

That's not just because you're holding a collection of mine in your hands right now, deciding whether or not to dive into it. It's also not just because I started my career with short stories, though that is in fact what I did. For me, short fiction was a great way for a novice writer to learn the craft of putting narrative and character and plot together, rather like climbing a series of foothills before tackling the awesome and slightly terrifying mountain of a full-fledged novel. I published seven stories before even beginning my first novel (and wrote a lot more that were never published), and had published twenty-two of them before that novel finally saw print.

No, my love of short fiction is a lot older than that. It goes back to the days of my youth, back when I first began my exploration of the universe of science fiction. My pattern then was to pick a new author off the local library's SF

shelves and try a book by him or her. If I liked it, I would read the shelves dry, and then (if I had any spare money that month) hunt up whatever newer works might be available at the bookstore.

But unless there was a novel by Author X that looked particularly intriguing, I

always preferred to start with a short-story collection if one was available.

Why? Very simply, because a collection gave me a better idea of the author's range than a single novel ever could. It let me see variations in style and character, plus a wider sampling of the kind of ideas he or she liked to play with. The full extent of the author's sense of humor was often better represented, too. Whereas humor might be almost totally absent in a particularly grim novel (or overly lavished in a deliberately silly one), a collection would again give the kind of balance to let me know if this was someone I wanted as my guide into worlds of wonder over the next few weeks or months.

Which brings us back to this particular collection. In putting it together, I've tried to give a fair sampling of the sort of stories I've been writing over the years. There's everything from serious to humorous; from very short vignette to novella length; from my somewhat older efforts ("Point Man," 1987) to more modern ones ("Star Song," 1997).

A quick rundown of the particular stories, in case you're interested:

"Point Man" was the third of a series of interconnected stories (modeled after Larry Niven's Known Universe series) that somehow never got any farther than these three. I have that problem sometimes with series: I get distracted by something else, and never quite get back. Maybe someday...

"Hitmen—See Murderers" was one of those ideas that let me edge a little ways into philosophy, as well as getting to figure out ways that something that looked so useful and good could generate such bad results. I was probably at least partially influenced by Arabian Nights-type stories, and seeing how a malevolent genie could mess up a perfectly good set of wishes. (Tip for beginning writers: read everything. It all gets used eventually.)

"The Broccoli Factor." Don't even ask. Too much time spent around small children, I guess.

"The Art of War" was commissioned (sort of) by Kris Rusch, who was editing Fantasy & Science Fiction at the time. She had been intrigued by my Star Wars character Grand Admiral Thrawn and his way of connecting art and war, and thought there was something else I could do with that pairing. This may not have been exactly what she had in mind, but it's what came out.

"The Play's the Thing" was inspired by my first trip to New York City since childhood, and my first-ever Broadway play. Until I can write, produce, or star in one myself, I guess this story will have to suffice.

And finally, "Star Song" was one of the handful of stories I've written where I

was able to draw on my love of music. It was also one of those maddening times where I quickly had all of the story except for one crucial piece. In this case, a comment from my son was the key to that piece, after which everything fell into place. I made the mistake of giving him 5% of the payment in thanks.

Never do that with a teenager. He now figures any residual money that comes in from the story is partially his, and as a paralegal student he knows how to argue from precedent. I'm just glad I didn't offer him 10%.

So there you have it: background, history, and, hopefully, a little appetite whetting. All that's left now is the stories themselves.

Enjoy!

Everyone, my mother used to tell me, had a special talent. Every human being, in one way or another, stood head and shoulders above all those around him. It was, she'd firmly believed, part of what made us human; one of the few things that stood us apart from the lower animals and even from the sophisticated alien hive minds that plied the galaxy.

She never told me just what she thought my talent was while I was growing up, of course. At the time I figured that she simply didn't want to prejudice me.

Looking back from the perspective of five decades, it has gradually become apparent that she hadn't told me what my talent was because she was never able to find any. But she was too kind to tell me outright that I was so uniformly average... and so I left home and spent thirty solid years looking for something in which I could excel.

Eventually, I found it. I found that I had a genuine and unique knack for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I remember vividly the day that conclusion suddenly came to me; remember almost as well the solid month afterwards that I fought it. But eventually I had to give in and accept it as truth. There were just too many instances scattered throughout my life to blame on coincidence and accident. There was the time I walked into my college room just as my roommate was frying his cortex with an illegal and badly overset brain-stretch stimulator. I was eventually exonerated of all blame, but the trauma and stigma were just as bad as if I'd been thrown out of school, and eventually led to the same result. I joined the Services and had worked my way up to a very promising position in starship engineering when I

was transferred to the Burma... three months before the ship's first officer attempted a mutiny and damn near made it. Again, the wrong place at the wrong time, and this time the stigma of association effectively ended my Services career. I eventually went into the merchant fleet, kicking around various ships until my special damn talent landed me in another innocent mess and I was forced to move on.

So given my history, I shouldn't have been surprised to be on the Volga's bridge when it broke out of hyperspace on that particularly nasty evening.

I shouldn't even have been on the bridge, for starters. That fact alone should have tipped me off that my perverse talent was about to do me dirty again.

Second Officer Mara Kittredge was at the command console, Tarl Fromm and Ing Waskin were backing her up at helm and scanners, and there was absolutely no reason why anyone else should have been needed, least of all the ship's third officer. But I was feeling restless. We were about to come out of hyperspace over Messenia, and I wanted to make sure this whole silly stop was handled as quickly as possible, so I was there. I should have known better.

"Thirty seconds," Waskin was saying as I arrived. He glanced up at me, then quickly turned back to his scanners. Probably, I figured, so that I wouldn't see that faintly gloating smile he undoubtedly had on his skinny face.