My mind is often drawn to the extremes, and when it comes to a given fantasy trope or science-fictional conceit, I often think of the first or last person to experience such a situation. Those thought experiments don’t always become stories, but sometimes they do

“The Streets of Ashkelon” was originally written for an anthology edited by Judith Merrill, who wanted the contributors to ignore the current taboos in force in the SF world. Unfortunately, the anthology didn’t go to print. It was more than a year before Harrison sold the story, and six years before it saw print in the United States.

Everyone’s coffee ritual is very specific—the same time of day, in that specific cup, with a banana or an oatmeal scone. Everything just fell into place when I started telling the mini-stories within the larger story.

I don’t remember how we thought of crossing Lewis Carroll and H. P. Lovecraft, but since “The Hunting of the Snark” is one of my favorite poems, in retrospect it seems utterly inevitable.

The thing I wanted to write about was being so cut off from one’s emotions that they’d become inaccessible. And I’ve always been fascinated with the story of the wizard who put his soul into his own finger, so that he couldn’t be killed. I thought that if I changed “soul” to “heart” then I could do something new with the tale.

In real life none of us are assured happy endings. We have choice and free will, but that also means we’re free to make terrible, wrongheaded decisions. That’s just part of being alive.

When I was twelve, I’m pretty sure I thought people and human meant the same thing. Bert grew up in a culture where the dividing line between human and monster is clearly defined, and in his world, the chances of being born with “monster” traits are much higher, so I think he has a more difficult time with this question than I did.