Without an S

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It started with The Rejection Letter (which, I suppose, seems backward, but then… well, keep reading).

Anyway, The Letter read, in full: “Dear Ian, I liked this story, but I’m afraid I have to reject it because of a matter of timelines. I bought one fairly similar to it the week before yours arrived. It isn’t close enough that you should worry about sending it elsewhere, but it is too close for me to publish both in Analog.”

But I wanted it to be in Analog! I reread the rejection letter a little more closely.

Now that I look back on the whole thing—in a retrospect which can be mine alone—the last word in the first sentence probably was a typo, but when I got the letter (which won’t happen, now), I read it as written. Timelines, rather than timeliness with an S.

That’s when I decided to rewrite the story, adding another timeline. It came out, I feel, much better than the original. I have no real way of knowing if Stan thinks it’s better, since after the rewrite he’ll never see my original version.

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