（外文电子版资料）Joe Haldeman - Seven and the Stars.pdf

SEVEN AND THE STARS Sometimes its best to settle for part of the truth. When youre at a cocktail party and some stranger asks what you do for a living, you dont come right out and say Im a science fiction writer. Sometimes its better to say Im a novelist, or Im a freelance writer, or even Im between jobs right now. Because you can get the damnedest responses. Now, Im not bothered by the philistines who mumble something about that Buck Rogers stuff and wander vaguely away. Nor even the people who have a terrific story idea and will split fifty-fifty, if youll do the writing. (I always tell them Im dead-lined and give them my ex-agents phone number.) What bothers me is some of the nuts you meet, if theyre unpleasant ones, and the people who think that you yourself must be a nut. People find out you write science fiction and they automatically think you share their belief in flying saucers, yetis, the Loch Ness monster, the Tooth Fairy, anything. Most of the sf writers I know dont even believe in NASA. Still, you cant stay away from cocktail parties. If a writer refuses a free drink, they find out about it and take away his Guild membership. So I was at this West Village cocktail party, having canapes for dinner, when an elegant woman in fifty-dollar jeans came up and asked me the Question. You cant lie to fifty-dollar jeans. Theres something sincere about that kind of excess. Oh, she said, you must be interested in UFOs. Here I have to admit to some incipient sexism, or at least an optimistic mating instinct. If shed been a man, I wouldve rolled my eyes ceilingward and said something disparaging. And life would be simpler now. As it was, I put on a serious expression and said only that I didnt think there was enough evidence to come to a conclusion. She dimpled glorious