Best of Omni Issue #3

SCIENCE FICTI COLLECTOR' > EDITIOOJ FOUR NEW STORIES • SF CLASSIC NINETEEN MASTERPIECES FEATURING ORSON SCOTT CARD, FRITZ LEIBER, ROBERT SHECKLEY EDITED BY BEN BOVA AND DON MYRUS THE BEST OF Dnnrui SCIENCE FICTION NO.3 EDITED BY BEN BOVA AND DON MYRUS ^^m *H1 mi : i THE BEST OF USB****; J .**iL*i! onnrui •#***=n SCIENCE FICTION NQ3 Credits Fioni cover painting by R Berliana. Text by Durant FC III. Soace Witness, leil by Ellen DaBow. 4 HOW PRO WRITERS REALLY WRITE-OR TRY TO by Robert Sheckley Stellar Technicians, text by Robert Sheckley. Toured the Universe Ce'esw,'; ;.»:*:'-= find Orders of 8 RENT CONTROL by Walter Tevis Magnitude. 12 SPACE WITNESS. Pictorial. Paintings Acknowledgement r>>= 7?=?. reoumedby by Bob T. McCall perm ssioti Ol Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Inc and ; " bv v'af Socter S Warourg. Ll'J n:heUK-Ihe 20 CLAP HANDS AND SING by Orson Scott Card r BrTiSll C'jrnx-n-,ve-3 :h a'--:! "5 '5" contiguous ri IPS" :er'![o e= irom rates c'Pim Hie Prtol by Stanislaw 25 THE FUTURE LOST by Robert Sheckley Lem. translated by Louis Mbarne. English translation copy.-j-jrit _=- - 'y.-'yc.- 3:3:;si:, : ,,vv^ 5 28 THE TEST by Stanislaw Lem mm: mf- 'ron Titer •- '<"? Universe by Robert HolrJslock and -- V-j ~ E;.vi-jj -.-Qlng v cut' -"isa r :te u £ A r 36 TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE. Pictorial. ,'.= ;-- . • ;-;--= Paintings by Robert Holdstock o, Vj,-' 5::^5. Na-.-, : j£-:ar "- and Malcolm .?cp. - '»; n-, VourigA-risisL'a i ue:ra:o-; Edwards l""JT ;• ";.;.v !:, " r J;' L-.a-" ,'«r=r' i;? ryrj-rii , ;. GLiL:ishi^.:i -r. -srei Catalog o/ Science Fiction 42 A HISS OF DRAGON by Gregory Benford and Marc Laidlaw Hardware by Vincent Di Fate and Ian Summers. published by Workman Publishing Company. 1980 50 MESSAGE FROM EARTH by Ian Stewart r The Empatr =.r. -j ..'::= 5='. =;-;<== es'.nted by permission of 'he 3 u:ho- ana ' s agent. Curtis Brown 52 NEWTON'S GIFT Paul J. Associate. Lid Copyright £ 1979 by John by Nahin SiiiiiiiiiifiSissMsa " , T f/o-'sssy J ;:-i:-:;- ^•-e- l".-^:.-.-^ ::':'; --^ Planet 56 CELESTIAL VISITATIONS. sassssassa«ii by R McOuar.'ie C Lucastilm Ltd.{LFL) Pictorial. Paintings by Gilbert Williams S5iiSiiii 1977 All rights reserved CourtesyolLucastHm. Ltd. _ The Cure, copyrtghl s 1945 by Lewis Padgett 60 GOD BLESS THEM by Gordon R. Dickson (ps«ldpriym CH Henry Kultner). renewed 1973. M,MMi Reprinted by permission oi IMIiMMHI!S5S!! "i Harold Matson Co Inc 70 ADVENTURE OF THE METAL MURDERER by Fred Saberhagen Copyright i. 79S1' by Orr.-i P.jd cavons Interna! ionj 74 THE ROCKS THAT MOVED by John Keefauver - Ltd.909ThirdAvenue.NewVork.NV 10033 All rights . reserved No part may be reproduced or in any THE VACUUM-PACKED PICNIC leiiism Iransni tied iorni or by any means, electronic by Rick Gauger or mechanical, including photocopying, recording. or any information storage- and- retrieval system. SCIENCE FICTION AND SURVIVAL by Ben E without pric permission ol the publisher Published simultaneously in ihe United Slates ol America and 86 THE MAN WHO WAS MARRIED TO SPACE AND TIME by Fritz Leiber m Canada FirstedHton Printed in the Uniteo States or America by Meredith Printing Corporation and 90 STELLAR distributed the TECHNICIAN. Pictorial Paintings by Vincent Di Fate m U S A . Canada. U S. territorial possessions and the world (except the U.K ) by Curtis C'rcuiation Company 21 Henderson Drive 96 GRAVESIDE WATCH by Edward H.Gandy West Caldweli. N J 07006 Distributed in the U K by Comag Ltd.. Tavistock Road West Drayton. 102 THE EMPATH AND THE SAVAGES by John Morressy Middlesex. U87 7QE. England. Certain ol the materials contained herein were previously 108 THE THOUSAND CUTS by Ian Watson published in Qmn, and were copyrighted in 1978. 1979 1980 and 19B1 by Omni Publications 114' HELL CREATURES OF THE International Ltd The editor-publisher and design THIRD PLANET by Stephen Robinett director of Ontm is Bob Gucoone: the president i; 117 KathyKeeton Special editor THE MADAGASCAR EVENT by Robert Haisty Notman ano Betsy Vayda 120 THE EYES ON BUTTERFLIES' WINGS by Patrice Duvic 126 OIL IS NOT GOLD by Sam Nicholson 132 THE CURE by Lewis Padgett PHOTOGRAPHTONYGUCCIONE 138 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. Pictorial. Paintings by John Harris HOW TO WRITERS REALLY WRITE- OR TRY TO BY ROBERT SHECKLEY In which Ke ™^cs; aulho's of sci. a veteran author, avid readet Sack and dree hen. as an aspiring write' as well renowned for his ironic humor, wanted to know N3W orc- describes to aspiring ! essicnal wnts-s actually dc Hie i writers SF L pp Hew dc ihey develop Ehs i the tribulations of iceas. plot their stories overcome tneir cftf- ficuties? the trade Now. twenty-five years later I r Know a little about it. He's on the ve-ge of u::c trag.c defeat. Process oral writers are extremely indi- ~hen, at the last moment, you get r m out of vidualistic in ins ways They approach iheir trouble. How does this happen? In a flash :ask. II you are among a lucky few, it is of insight, your hero solves his problem by relatively simple You get an icea which in some logical means inherent m the situa- turn plot suggests a and characters. With tion but overlooked until now; Done prop- that much m nand. you go lo a typewriter erly, your solution makes the reader say. Of and basn cui a slory. When it's oone. a few course! Why didn't i think of that?" Vou then hours - !a;er. you correct the gramma' and cing the story to a swift conclusion -and spelling This editing usually results in a that's all there is to it, messy-looking manuscript, so you type out This straightforwarc app'oach saw me the who^e thing again. For better or worse, through many stories, Inevitably, however, your story is now finished. sophistication set in ard I began to experi- That's pretty much now I went abcu" i: ence difficulties. I began to view writing as early in rry caree' If anyone asked, I wouid a problem and to look for ways of dealing sxplam that plolting a sJQry consists merely with that prob'em. of giving your hero a serious problem, a I locked to my colleagues and their mci- PAINTING BY KENT G. BELLOWS — I did not vidual methodologies. Lester del Rey, tor sparkling sea, olive trees and solitude. So I ment. The substance of what wrote It anything, even gib- example, told me that he wrote out his sto- moved to the island of Ibiza. There I rented matter could be ries in his head— word for word, sentence a 300-year-old farmhouse on a hill overlook- berish, even lists of disconnected words, over over again. All that for sentence — before committing them to ing the Mediterranean. The house lacked even my name and wordage in paper. Months, even years, would be de- electricity, buf it did have four rooms, any mattered was producing daily voted to this mental composition. one of which I could use as my office. First I quantity. Only when he was ready to type out a tried to work in the beautiful, bright rooms Perhaps that sounds simple. It was not, I you. The first day went well enough. story would Lester go to his office, which upstairs. Alas, I couldn't concentrate on my assure second, however, I exhausted was about Ihe size of a broom closet, writing here because I spent too much time By the had I found myself though not so pretty. He had built it in the admiring the splendid view from the win- my ready stock of banalities. creating something like this; middle of his living room. After cramming dow. So I moved downstairs where there himself inside, Lester would be locked in were no such distractions. These two 'Ah yes, here we are at last, getting near place by a typewriter that unfolded from a rooms had only one narrow window with the bottom of the page. One more sen- just more words . that's it, go, wall onto his lap. Paper, pencils, cigarettes bars over it in case of attack by pirates. tence, a few and ashtray were there, and a circulation Formerly a storage place for potatoes, baby, go, do those words ... Ah, page 19, and now we are at the' fan to keep him from suffocating. It was these rooms were dark and dank. There done. That's page top of the last page for the much like being in an upright coffin, but was nothing to divert my attention. But I page 20— with the disadvantage that he was not couldn't work here either. My kerosene day— or night, since it is now 3:30 in the dead. lamp gave off too much smoke. bloody morning and I have been at this for It what feels like a hundred years. But only Philip Klass, better known as William At last I saw what the real trouble was. Tenn, had many different work methods stemmed from my working indoors. Hence- one page to go, the last, and then I can put in it aside this insane nonsense and do some- back in those days. He developed them forth I would toil outdoors, as was meant else, in the order to cope with a blockage as tenacious lobe. So I set up on the beach— only to be thing else, anything anything and enveloping as a love-stricken boa frustrated once again, this time by the heat world except this.

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