Memoir

by Judith Merril

Actually, this story should never be reprinted without the illustration that invented it.

In the Bad Old Days of happy memory, before science fiction turned respectable (and almost all other popular fiction died or went into comic strips), the phrase "pulp magazines" was applied to certain publications. These usually had cheap ("pulp") paper, modest pretensions, action illustrations, gaudy covers, and low prices—to reader and writer both. One way of keeping them cheap was to print the four-color covers in large batches at a single pressrun: This sometimes meant that covers were bought before the stories they "illustrated."

I was fortunate enough on three occasions to be asked to write stories to fit covers. "Fortunate"? Right, because I found the process invariably produced completely "different" stories, of a sort I would never have generated out of my usual "creative" processes.

This one was written to a cover supplied by Fred Pohl, and is, I believe, my one-and-only action-adventure-chase story.

I have used this device with writing classes, by the way, and warmly recommend it to teachers and to apprenticing writers. It is revealing and exciting to see how many completely different stories are suggested to different individuals by a single painting!