[Last month, I was delighted to discover a brand-new author, Alexei Panshin, whose Down to the Worlds of Men was not just one of the best stories I'd read in a while, but also refreshingly starred a fourteen-year old girl on the verge of womanhood.  I reached out to Mr. Panshin to express how much I'd enjoyed the story.  Not only did he respond, he prepared the following article on the creation of his work.  Please enjoy this, as I did…

by Alexei Panshin

When I began trying to write stories in the summer of 1958, I was completely ignorant and totally inept. I proved as much that fall by writing an unpublishable SF novel, but I learned a lot in doing it. Mainly what I learned was to get my think-think out of the way and listen to the words I was being given to set down on paper.

After another year and a half with more rejections, while stationed at the headquarters of a US Army preventive medicine company in a compound outside Seoul, Korea, I got an idea for a science fiction story.  I was still bothered by the [male-]chauvinism and belligerence Heinlein had shown in Starship Troopers and I wanted to write a story with a devastating conclusion that I imagined Heinlein would endorse, but I would not [Specifically to illustrate the troubling aspects of Heinlein's views, Mr. Panshin clarified for me.  (Ed.)]. 

My approach to constructing a story at that point was to accumulate a number of key factors and then integrate them into one story.

I had just read Harper Lee's new novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and as much as I liked it, I hadn't been completely convinced by her portrayal of the mentation of a six-year-old girl.  Neither had I been convinced by Heinlein's little girl character Peewee in another book I'd loved, Have Spacesuit–Will Travel.  As of that time, Heinlein had yet to include a female protagonist in any of his juvenile novels.

I had never attempted such a character in any story I'd written myself. And I was always trying to do something I hadn't done before in every story.  So a young female lead became my second factor.

Next, I'd just read an article in Astounding by G. Harry Stine called "Science Fiction Is Too Conservative."  In it, he proposed the idea — not actually new — of giant spaceships carrying colonies to the stars.  That was my third factor.

The final piece of my story fell into place when I picked up a new novel called Walkabout in the camp library.  The blurb spoke of a rite of passage in which Australian aborigine boys were sent off to survive for a month in the wild by themselves.

So there was my story: a young girl from a starship would be dropped on a human colony planet to survive for a month in order to become an adult and earn citizenship on her ship. But the starship would be offended by the colony and vote to destroy it.

Almost as soon as I thought of the story, I found myself transferred to the company detachment at Camp Red Cloud in Uijongbu. There I was drafted by the second lieutenant in charge to do his typing. This was the only opportunity to write that I would have during my two years of Army service and I made the most of it. Over the next several months, I wrote my story.  At 20,000 words, it was the second longest story I had yet attempted.

I sent the manuscript off to John W. Campbell at Astounding, by that time retitled Analog.  But while it was gone and then being returned to me I came to the conclusion that to bring off the devastating ending I aimed for, the story needed to be longer.  I submitted it again to Fred Pohl, editor of Galaxy and If, and then set to work on the longer version.

Pohl offered to buy my story, but only if I cut it in half.  I did the job in one night while on charge of quarters duty back at company headquarters. I typed furiously through the night rewriting the story and eliminating the overwhelming ending for which it existed while I listened on the radio as John Glenn orbited the planet three times.

And Pohl did buy the shortened story which he retitled "Down to the Worlds of Men" and published a year and a half later in the July 1963 issue of If following the serialization of Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars, which had a young female protagonist, though not one whose voice I believed in…

[Mr. Panshin has, in fact, written a great deal about his journey into authorship.  You can read more (and discover the other wonders he has for sale) at his publishing house.  Go!]