Bears Discover Fire

and read it, for the first time in years, with some trepidation. I was pleased to find that though I wouldn’t write it again, I wouldn’t change a word in it. Since it was noticed (if never published) by Whit Burnett of Story magazine, it is my connection with another era in literature; that also pleases me. And it is reassuring to me in another way.

I have sometimes felt that I was a gate-crasher in the world of SF, passing off odd mainstream works as fantasy and science fiction in order to get them published. “George” assures me that I have, in fact, for better or worse, been a fantasy writer from jump, engaged in a long process of coming home.

I hope you like these stories, the contrivances of my heart.