I did many things last summer. I wrote three novels in the Berkley Lone Wolf series. I did some short stories. I did a novelization of the Lindsay Anderson film O Lucky Man! but it’s never going to be published, unfortunately, because Lindsay Anderson wants to do his own version with stills from the picture. Boy was I mad! Not as mad as Warner Books, though, who are out twenty-five-hundred dollars. I’m not giving it back, Jack. Those are some of the things I did last summer. I went to Saratoga with my family and lost three hundred dollars. I got a new Calais Coupe and drove it all over Bergen and Rockland counties looking for a way out. (No luck.) But the important and memorable thing I did last summer was to write a science fiction novel.It is called Tactics of Conquest and Pyramid Books will publish it in January. I have already seen it in galleys; it is what they call a rush job. A copy editor called me last week to check a certain term and to ask if I had ever heard of Bobby Fischer, adding, “By the way this is a very good novel, not at all like science fiction.”
