Prolog

Stan Schmidt has been Editor of Analog for as long as many people can remember. If I were 18 years old today, as I was when I first met Stan, I’m sure it would seem to me that Stan sprung from the ground in that position. For better or for worse, however, some of us have long memories. There was once a time when Stan was not with Analog. But there was never a time when he was not an Editor.

"Is it true?" I hear some people cry. Was there really once a Stan without an Analog? Yes, my friends, let me tell you of it. It was in the BeforeTime, in the deep mists of History, before the Dawn of Civilization.

Stan Before Analog

I was a callow youth, a sophomore in college, with a burning passion to become a physicist, to develop the unlimited power of nuclear fusion, to liberate mankind and send everyone to the stars. Stan was a physics professor. I had heard of him, and I had seen him around; I knew that I would someday take a class from him—after all, we were at a small college, with a grand total of five physics professors, and about the same number of physics majors. But I would not have met him in the normal course of events for another year.

No, I met him because he was also the teacher for the special science fiction class. The class was not taught by the English department—sf was not real literature, after all. Stan taught it. Stan actually created the sf course, and persuaded the Powers That Be to let him teach it. He was qualified because he, unlike the people in the English department, was a professional author.

Stan’s course suffered from a serious problem, however: excessive popularity. The whole school, it seemed, wanted to enroll. So before registration began, a friend and I introduced ourselves to Stan, hoping to use our influence as physics majors to sneak onto the rolls before enrollment began.

Stan wasn’t interested in my physics background. His first question was, "Do you do any writing?"

The correct answer was, "Sort of." My actual answer was, "Yeah, sure." Big mistake.

He immediately asked to see some of my stuff. I immediately agreed. Big mistake.

I had gotten myself into the class but at the price of having a homework assignment even before registration began. Seeing that this was a guy who would call my bluffs, I did not disappoint him—I brought my favorite story I had written to date, so he could critique it.

Big mistake.

He read my best, and gave me the following fateful advice: "Marc, you have the talent to become a published author. Now there are just three things you have to do if you want to get published. First you have to write. Then you have to write some more. And finally you have to write some more."

As you may realize, this is terrible advice to give to a starry-eyed 18 year old. I still have a photo-sharp memory of the moment when he said that, when in my mind I made the commitment to publish a story. The memory still tastes of excitement, triumph, and terror—the terror came from knowing that I would pursue this goal to victory and the suspicion that I had no idea just how much suffering lay between me and that eventual victory.

So I wrote and I wrote and I wrote some more. For the first two years Stan acted as my editor as he had in the class, critiquing everything I did; when I graduated I started sending my poor efforts directly to the magazines, to collect my standard rejection slips. In a six year period I wrote 50 stories, collecting two or three times that number of rejections.

And then Stan became editor of Analog. I hadn’t expected it—I hadn’t heard from Stan for a year or so—but it didn’t surprise me when I heard. It made perfect sense to me, though I’m sure a lot of other people were surprised. Stan had always been the Editor, after all. It just took a while for Analog to figure it out.

Epilog

For a brief moment I thought Stan’s rise might make my writing career a little easier. Silly mistake. Stan rejected my stories as enthusiastically as his predecessor.

Then, just as another editor began to show interest in my work, he relented, and published a story of mine.

So do I feel I need to thank him? Did he make my trip to authorhood easier? Not at all. You see, he didn’t let me publish a merely good story. No, for me, the person he had tricked into self-torture for six years, a merely good story was not good enough. He waited till I had done a story that would poll as one of the top three stories of the year in Anlab before he would let me get into Analog. A stranger would have been kinder. What can I say? The man’s a fiend.

And that is a story of Stan before Analog. A story of Stan the Editor—who made me an author even without a magazine. There are other stories of Stan before Analog, stories of slide trombones in pizza parlors, of spectacular Appalachian mountains seen only through a haze of pain, but if I told all my best stories about Stan, what would I use for blackmail? For now, I’d better keep the rest.