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lack of skill forced me to the core of prose, so to speak.
     
    What I’m most aware of when look over this today is the hyper-specific focus on objects. I don’t know what that’s about. It’s still a characteristic of my writing. I just don’t know any other way to do it.
     
    If you were writing this today, what would you do differently? What are the story’s weaknesses, and how would you change them?
     
    As with just about everything I’ve written, by the time I’m forced to let go of it, it feels like it’s become what it is. I never think about revising published work. While it’s being written, it’s a process. On publication, it becomes an object.
     
    What inspired this story? How did it take shape? Where was it initially published?
     
    I was taking a course in science fiction at the University of British Columbia, in my senior undergraduate year. The teacher was Dr. Susan Wood. We were about the same age, and knew one another socially. I tried to get out of writing a term paper, and she cunningly suggested I turn in a piece of fiction instead. It proved hugely more difficult than any paper. She then insisted I submit it for publication.
     
    I remember discovering that I could write very detailed, sometimes oddly evocative descriptions of objects relatively easily. I had to build on that.
     
    It was published in a short-lived amateur magazine called UnEarth, which only considered unpublished writers. I think they paid $2.7.
     
    Where were you in your life when you published this piece, and what kind of impact did it have?
     
    I was married, not yet a parent, about to graduate, no idea as to future career other than definitely not wanting to teach. Given UnEarth’s great obscurity, nothing at all happened upon publication. I was somewhat underwhelmed, and didn’t try writing any more fiction for a couple of years.
     
    How has your writing changed over the years, both stylistically and in terms of your writing process?
     
    It’s gotten longer! Otherwise, I have a sneaking suspicion that it more closely resembles this first story, the longer I keep writing.
     
    What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
     
    Robert Sheckley gave me two very specific pieces of advice, on taking me to lunch in New York after buying “Johnny Mnemonic” for OMNI magazine. Never, he said, sign a multi-book contract. And never buy that big old house that writers all seem to want to buy.
     
    Any anecdotes regarding the story or your experiences as a fledgling writer?
     
    If Susan Wood hadn’t tricked me into writing this one, I’m not certain I’d have taken the step. I had a number of friends, early in my career, who did things like submitting story manuscripts behind my back, to markets I’d have been frightened to submit to (Susan was one of those as well, later) and I’m very grateful for that, as much as it made me want to scream at the time.
     
    <>
     
    ~ * ~
     
    A Long Way Back
    by Ben Bova
     
     
    T
    om woke slowly, his mind groping back through the hypnosis. He found himself looking toward the observation port, staring at stars and blackness.
     
    The first man in space, he thought bitterly.
     
    He unstrapped himself from the acceleration seat, feeling a little wobbly in free fall.
     
    The hypnotic trance idea worked, all right.
     
    The last thing Tom remembered was Arnoldsson putting him under, here in the rocket’s compartment, the old man’s sad soft eyes and quiet voice. Now 22,300 miles out, Tom was alone except for what Arnoldsson had planted in his mind for post-hypnotic suggestion to recall. The hypnosis had helped him pull through the blastoff unhurt and even protected him against the vertigo of weightlessness.
     
    Yeah, it’s a wonderful world, Tom muttered acidly.
     
    He got up from the seat cautiously, testing his coordination against zero gravity. His magnetic boots held to the deck satisfactorily.
     
    He was lean and wiry, in his early forties, with a sharp angular