By Randall Garrett
In the first chapter of Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, the venerable Bilbo Baggins makes a speech at the party he is giving to celebrate his eleventy-first birthday. In that speech, he tells the assembled hobbits that he does not know half of them as well as he should like, and he likes less than half of them half as well as they deserve.
Most of his guests sit around trying to work it out and see if it comes out a compliment.
I am still doing exactly the same thing with Van’s introduction to this book.
Van vastly underrates his own memory and even more vastly overrates mine. I remember our first meeting well, but
Why should A. E. Van Vogt, who has been a glittering star in the science fiction firmament since 1939, remember an unimpressive, awestruck fan who had one very minor story published under another name four years before? That summer of 1948, I found his name in the L.A. phone book and trepidatingly called him up. I must have said something right, for he invited me to his home.
I showed up, but I have the feeling that Van was far more impressed by the blue-eyed ‘honey blonde I brought with me.
Van’s working out of my age is a marvel of mathematical exactitude. I was born in 1927. Unlike Bilbo, I have never liked birthday parties, especially my own. Just for the novelty, I decided to celebrate my fiftieth, but only after it had passed;
You are all invited to my next such party, to be held sometime after my eleventy-first birthday.
By that time, I may have enough material to put together another book like this, but that is problematical. You see, I only do them when I bloody well feel like it. If the right idea for a pastiche or parody hits me, I do it, but that doesn’t happen often. This book represents some twenty years of that kind of work.
The difference between a pastiche and a parody is, perhaps, a subtle one..
A pastiche attempts to tell a story in the same way that another author would have told it. In this book, The Best Policy is a pastiche, not a parody. I used, to the best of my ability, Eric Frank Russell’s style of writing and his way of telling a story.
A parody, when properly done, takes an author’s idiosyncrasies—of style, content, and method of presentation—and very carefully exaggerates them. You jack them up just one more notch. The idea is to make those idiosyncrasies blatantly visible. Thus, Backstage Lensman is a parody. Doc Smith would never have-very probably could never have-written it. It is very difficult indeed for a writer to see his own idiosyncrasies; they are too much a part of him.
But the line between parody and pastiche is not hard and thin; it is broad and fuzzy. Is The Horror Out of Time a pastiche or a parody? I don’t know. You tell me.
I do not decide to write a pastiche or parody just for the sake of writing one. The story idea comes first. In 99.44% of the cases, I write my own story in one of my own styles. But once in a very great while it seems to me that the idea belongs in someone else’s universe. Then I write a pastiche. See, herein, No Connections.
And when the idea belongs in another’s universe—except that it is patently ridiculous—I write a parody. The idea for Backstage Lensman, for instance, you will find in the next-to-last scene, in a simple mathematical formula. All the rest of it came from that.
The “Reviews in Verse” are a different breed of mutant. They are quite deliberate. The idea is to tell the plot with reasonable accuracy—and leave out the entire point that the author was trying to make! So even if you do not heed my warning at the beginning of that section, you will still not know what the story is really about. For that, go to the originals.
The “Little Willies” are takeoffs of an Englishman named Harry Graham, who originated them. Since he was a retired officer of Her Majesty’s [Victoria, that is.] Coldstream Guards, he wrote under the name “Col. D. Streamer.”
The Benedict Breadfruit stories need no introduction from me. My very good friend, Reginald Bretnor, got his very good friend, Grendel Briarton, to do an introduction for them. And Mr. Briarton, apparently, had to go to Ferdinand Feghoot for the final copy.
I have not, by any means, given what might be called The Garrett Treatment to all the writers I admire. Although Van’s Slan is in here, his distinctive style is ripe for story treatment. Ted Sturgeon would be fun. Fritz Leiber is on my little list. Bob Silverberg is begging for it. Lester del Rey is going to get his one of these days. Cordwainer Smith has it coming. Frank Herbert will not go unscathed. Mack Reynolds is overdue. Avram Davidson will not be neglected. Neither will Michael Kurland. There are others. Just wait.
Maybe before my eleventy-first...
Wait! Don’t go away! This book is like a tapestry. I supplied the basic material, and Frank Kelly Freas supplied the lovely embroidery. [Is that a crewel remark?] When this book becomes an expensive collector’s item (when. not if). it will be because of Kelly’s work, not mine.
(Kelly, if you or Polly cut what follows because of some false feeling of modesty, may your pencils break, your inkpots run dry, your typewriter clog, your paints become gelatinous, and your canvas rot. Truth, dammit, is truth!)
This book is Kelly’s work in more than one way. Let me give you some background, and then I’ll tell you a true story.
I met Kelly in the early fifties at a science fiction convention. I don’t remember which one; they all begin to blend into one another after all this time. (See, Van? I told you!) I don’t remember the con, but I remember Kelly. At that time, he sported a large red mustache and a smile which kept it turned up at the ends. I loved the man immediately.
Kelly is witty, outgoing, friendly, gregarious, and articulate. He is shrewd, careful, intelligent, and analytical. He is sensitive, understanding, warm and compassionate. And he knows the science and technique of art as few people in history have known it.
He is, of course, a science fiction fan of the highest caliber. It shows in every illustration he does. He cares about science fiction. And he cares about the people who write and read it.
That’s not all the background I could give you on the man, but it will have to do for the nonce. Now comes the story.
A while back, I was talking to Kelly on the phone about a book of mine that didn’t quite measure up to his and Polly’s specifications. Suddenly, he said: “Hey! What about a book of your parodies and pastiches?”
“Is the world ready for this?” I asked.
“Damn right it is!” and he mentioned several stories he liked. He got me enthusiastic, and I went to work finding them.
About a week later he called me. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” he shouted into my tender ear.
Carefully easing the receiver back toward that offended organ, I said: “you do? Is it contagious?”
“No, no! I’ve got the title for your book!”
Nero Wolfe once said: “I have no talent. I have genius or nothing.” The thing about Kelly is that he has both.
His talent lies in his ability to use any and every artistic medium that exists. His genius lies in the way he uses them. And that genius shows through every medium.
Let me give you an imaginative example-what Albert Einstein called a “thought experiment.”
I am fond of churches as works of art; I am a church buff, among other things, and I go absolutely ape over the Gothic style. The great Gothic cathedrals of Europe really turn me on, and if I were going to build a church, it would be in that style. Suppose I had enough money to build the church of my dreams. It would take many tens of millions of dollars today.
With that vast sum in my pocket, I would go to Frank Kelly Freas and say: “Kelly, build me that church. Hire engineers, hire architects, hire artisans of any kind you need. Money is no object, but build me that church.”
He could do it; you damn well betcha he could. The spires, the gargoyles, the statues, the stained glass windows-all. And when he was through (assuming a lifespan of some three centuries), it would be the most beautiful church in all Christendom. That is his talent.
And those who know his genius would take one look at it and say, in no irreverent tone: “My God! That’s a Frank Kelly Freas Church!”
Selah.