Buy Jupiter and Other Stories
To all the editors, whose careers
at one time or another,
have intersected my own -
In THE EARLY ASIMOV I mentioned the fact that there were eleven stories that I had never succeeded in selling.What's more, said I in that book, all eleven stories nolonger existed and must remain forever in limbo.
However, Boston University collects all my papers with an assiduity and determination worthy of a far better cause, and when they first began to do so back in 1966, I handed them piles and piles of manuscript material I didn't look through.
Some eager young fan did, though. Boston University apparently allows the inspection of its literary collections for research purposes, and this young fan, representing himself as a literary historian, I suppose, got access to my files. He came across the faded manuscript of Big Game, a thousand-word short-short which I had listed inTHE EARLY ASIMOVas the eleventh and last of my lost rejections.
Having read THE EARLY ASIMOV, the fan recognized the value of the find. He promptly had it reproduced and sent me a copy. And I promptly saw to it that it got into print. It appeared in BEFORE THE GOLDEN AGE.