I envisioned this unborn masterpiece as a kind of Miss Lonelyhearts of the genre, akin to some of Barry Malzberg’s riffs on the sad and lonely life of the SF writer. When Carter finally told me that the project was dead, I knew the title, in all its stark allusiveness, was too good to let die. When asked by Claude Lalumiere and Marty Halpern for a contribution to Witpunk, their anthology of black-humored, satirical SF, I realized I had found the perfect home for my diminutive take on Carter’s abandoned masterpiece. How I decided to attach the style and tone of one of my favorite mainstream writers, J. P. Donleavy, to this tale is less clear in memory. But I think the combination of subject matter and angle of attack work well. Science Fiction Pissing warily but with immense somatic relief in one of the ill-maintained and rather frightening rest rooms at Penn Station. And Corso Fairfield blissfully directs his golden urine into the commodious porcelain basin. Distilled from several cups of tedious Amtrak coffee.
