All Novels Are Sequels; Influence Is Bliss.

It Drains The Bars And Cafes After Hours, Concentrates The Wicked And The Guilty Along Its Chipped Formica Counter, And Thrums With The Gossip Of Criminals, Policemen, Shtarkers,and Schlemiels, Whores And Night Owls ... Three Or Four Floaters, Solitaries, And Drunks Between Benders Lean Against The Sparkly Resin Counter, Sucking The Tea From Their Shtekelehs And Working The Calulations Of Their Next Big Mistake.

I Don't Have A Problem With Many Uses Of The Word Genre, Just Certain Ones. I Have The Most Trouble When These Labels Are Used To Prevent Discussion, To Prevent A Work From Being Taken Seriously As Literature. When We Say "genre," We Generally Mean "something Crappy," Something That Would Be Sold In An Airport.

To Me, Clark Kent In A Phone Booth And Houdini In A Packing Crate, They Were One And The Same Thing," He Would Learnedly Expound At Wondercon Or Angoulême Or To The Editor Of The Comics Journal . "you Weren't The Same Person When You Came Out As When You Went In.

Most Science Fiction Seemed To Be Written For People Who Already Liked Science Fiction; I Wanted To Write Stories For Anyone, Anywhere, Living At Any Time In The History Of The World.

So It Was Scary, But That's How It Goes. To My Great Delight, I Discovered That It Did All Belong.