Many Mansions (Introduction)

Untitled, unsigned introduction to the novelette.

Essay starts: "Here's an example of mainstream contemporary-literature modes carried over into science fiction, something I've done now and again throughout my entire career. (A very early story called 'The Songs of Summer' owed a great deal to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. I've channeled Joseph Conrad on a number of occasions. One passage in my novel Son of Man employs William Burroughs' cut-up technique. And so forth.) This is another, and I think it was a successful transplantation."

Essay finishes: [...] "a reader wrote an angry letter to the editor of the magazine where my story appeared, complaining that I had stolen the title of a famous story by Joseph Conrad. Maybe I should attach explanatory footnotes to these things.)" [Source: PR# 834559]