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Introduction

To Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

to David Ford

and to the Trap-Door Spiders for reasons detailed in the introduction

Special Note

The erudite copy reader points out that since the stories that folloritten for separate publication in acharacters each time, and do it repetitious-ly He pointed out several of theexamples of this and, with reverence for his exalted position, I corrected the estions There undoubtedly remain some dozens of repetitions that could bear revision, but I hate to introduce too ivethem to stay?

Introduction

Because I have a friendly and personal writing style, readers have a tendency to write toall kinds of friendly and personal questions And because I really a style, such as it is, portrays me to be, I answer those letters And since I don't have a secretary or any form of assistant whatever, it takes a lot of the ti

It is only natural, then, that I have taken to writing introductions to my books in an attempt to answer so some of the letters

For instance, because I write in et questions such as these:

"Why do you, a lowly science fiction writer, think you can write a two-volume work on Shakespeare?"

"Why do you, a Shakespearean scholar, choose to write science fiction thrillers?"

"What gives you, a biochemist, the nerve to write books on history?"

"Whatabout science?"

And so on, and so on

It seems certain, then, that I will be asked, either with a mystery stories

Here goes, then

I startedcareer in science fiction, and I still write science fiction when I can, for it remains my first and chief literary love However, I a thescience fiction I re my life when, as a ten-year-old, I pilfered forbidden copies of The Shadow fro his afternoon nap (I asked him why he read it if I was forbidden, and he said he needed it in order to learn English, whereas I had the advantage of school What a rotten reason I thought that was)

In writing science fiction, then, I frequently introduced the mystery motif Two of my novels, The Caves of Steel (Doubleday, 1953) and The Naked Sun (Doubleday, 1957), are full-fledged murder mysteries for all that they are science fiction as well I have written enough shorter science fiction mysteries of one sort or another to make it possible to publish a collection of them as Asimov's Mysteries (Doubleday, 1968)

I also wrote a "straight" mystery novel, The Death Dealers (Avon, 1958), [Well, it was rejected by Doubleday, if you must knohich was eventually reissued in 1968 by Walker amp; Company under my own title of A Whiff of Death This, however, dealt entirely with science and scientists and its atmosphere was still that of the science fiction novel, as was true of two azines

Increasingly, I felt the itch to writethat held h, was the fact that the mystery had evolved in the last quarter-century and my tastes had not Mysteries these days are heavily drenched in liquor, injected with drugs, marinated in sex, and roasted in sadism, whereas ray cells