Who Can Replace A Man? [antikvár]

IntroductionThe toea and the title for this collection were suggested by my publisher; so i have been given, in my fortieth year, the chance to look back and take stock of the decade during which I have been writing for publication.These stories include more or less my first and more or less my latestfrom the tale of Rodney Furnell smarting at his isolation to Westermark relishing his. They are shuffled into more or less chronological order which seemsI suppose not coincidentallyto represent also an order of complexity. Whether they actually are "my best," I cannot say. But they are all stories of which I have not yet tired or which represent (to me at least) milestones on the winding way; either they won a prize, or celebrated a particular event, or were praised, orto be specific about the reason for including "The Impossible Star"because I iiad for once set myself to compose a stave of trad sf.My best friends beg me to turn away from science fiction, my worst enemies claim I have never turned to it. In the circumstances, one can only go on writing whatever it is one does write. But I suspect there is something in what both sides say. Although I dislike a science fiction writer who is so ill-equipped for his job that he believes Mars to be older than Earth, or an isobar to be a place where one buys cold drinks, I become impatient directly technicalities begin to conceal art. On the other hand, I do see that these stories sometimes cling too comfortably to the conventions of sfthough this may be more apparent now than when the stories first appeared, when the whole geiure was a deal narrower and more parochial.But the sf conventions have worn thinhappily, for it means that writers must in future strike out more and more for themselves and have something individual to offer, rather than rally for protection under the old tattered banner. It looks as if science fiction has grown wide enough to reach thexi