Enough Rope

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“Eighty-four stories?” My friend gave me a look. “That’s not a book,” he said. “That’s a skyscraper.”

It’s a handful, too, as you’ve no doubt already noticed yourself, and I’m conscious as I prepare these introductory remarks that I’m only making the damned thing longer with every word I write. This book was very nearly entitled Long Story Short, and it’s been observed that when you utter the words “to make a long story short,” it’s already too late.

But I digress, and not for the first time. A short story collection seems to cry out for an introduction, especially when it’s a huge doorstop of a thing like this one, and especially when it represents one person’s entire output of short fiction over a career that began in (gulp!) 1957.

Well, virtually entire...

My earliest stories, collected a few years ago in a signed limited edition (One Night Stands, Crippen & Landru), have been purposely omitted. I don’t think much of them — which puts me in the majority, I’d have to say — and, while I’m not unwilling for collectors and specialists to have them, they don’t belong in this book. (I’ve made one exception, my first published story, called “You Can’t Lose.” It seemed worth including, if only as a curiosity.)

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