The Flesh Tinker and the Fashion Goddess

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Ray Aldridge does not use the kind of extrapolation Jack Williamson mentions in his essay. Instead "The Flesh Tinker and The Fashion Goddess" relies on another kind of extrapolation — one in which Ray examined the West’s fascination with looks and asked himself "What would happen in a culture in which appearance was a person’s most important commodity?"

I remember the genesis of the Flesh Tinker himself Ray also attended the experimental writers workshop put on in Taos, New Mexico, by Writers of The Future. At the workshop, the student writers outlined stories on three-by-five cards, and the instructors helped the students develop the ideas. "I told the group about Flesh Tinker,” Ray writes. "Fred Pohl and Jack Williamson got these musing looks on their august faces. One of them said something like, ‘You know, it’s too bad Leo Margulies isn’t editing these days; you could sell him a Flesh Tinker story every month for a year.’ The other nodded. I stretched open my ears, then asked something like, ‘Do you think anyone else would buy Flesh Tinker stories?’ ‘Ob sure,’ they said, or words to that effect. I sold the first one to Amazing Stories and the second one to PULPHOUSE. It just goes to show how smart Fred and Jack are.”

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