What kind of fan mail do I get? Mostly compliments on my novels (thanks), requests for pictures (I ran out long ago), and suggestions for future writing (but I have plenty of my own ideas). But some are different. One letter in Dismember was from a woman who had not read my books, but she informed me that I was ignorant and sarcastic. Why? Because her friend had asked me how I really felt about fan mail, and I replied that I’d rather be writing my novel. I responded to her politely, inquiring how she would feel if she had to answer up to 160 letters a month which squeezed out all her free time and some of her working time at her own expense, and someone asked how she felt about it, and she said candidly that she’d rather have more time to herself, and that person then called her ignorant and sarcastic. I received no response. Well, that’s one way to cut down on mail. God preserve us from the self-righteous.
Another was from a woman who had read the rape scene in Unicorn Point and declared herself an ex-Anthony reader. I replied that I was sorry to lose her, but that when a person does something another person deems unconscionable, the latter has little choice but to withdraw support. I mentioned that I had just done something similar myself. Oh, you want to hear about that? Well, hang on; this is a major discussion.
More than a year back I heard from a prisoner who had murdered his girlfriend. It was a brutal and to my mind pointless crime for which he was condemned to death. He was politically conservative and believed in the death penalty. His quarrel with the system was that his lawyer kept making appeals on his behalf which he didn’t want. He had committed the crime and deserved to die for it, and he was frustrated by the continual delays.
Now, I am politically liberal, and I don’t like the death penalty. That does not mean I like murder. I don’t like killing, whether it is done by private enterprise or the state. I don’t like killing animals either, which is why I am a vegetarian. No need to belabor my philosophy here; you are welcome to read all about me in my autobiography, Bio of an Ogre, and if your local bookstore doesn’t carry it, don’t kill the proprietor, just reason sweetly with him. As Ferrovius reasoned all night with a pagan, in G. B. Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion, and in the morning not only was the man a Christian, his hair was as white as snow. The pacifistic approach can work wonders when practiced by ogres. I’m sure your store will agree to stock the book. But I try to answer my mail without regard to the nature of the letter writer (well, junk mail gets checked and thrown away), and so I answered the murderer’s letters. I made no bones about my sympathy for the victim of his crime, and agreed that he had a right to insist that he pay the penalty in his fashion. You see, I believe in the right to life, and also in the right to death, so I support legislation to allow patients to say no to heroic measures used to prolong their lives in the face of terminal maladies. Note that I do not say that all killing is wrong, just that I don’t like it. Absolutes are hard to come by, for those of liberal persuasion, and truth does generally seem to be a shade of gray.
Well, the murderer wrote again, and I answered, and it continued. Sometimes I will cut off a too-persistent correspondent, because I really do have other things to do than to engage in frivolous dialogue, but this person’s letters were serious and well thought out. It turned out that I was the only one who did keep up with him; his friends and family did not. He assumed it was because I cared for him. No, I was simply being true to my standard. But as long as the correspondence continued, I thought I might as well learn something useful, such as why would a man murder a woman who by his own account was true to him and wanted nothing but good for him? Men murder women every day; is it just their way of proving how macho they are, or do they do it to prevent the women from moving on to other men? If we could only fathom a common underlying motive, and discover how to abate the situation before an innocent person gets killed, we might spare the world much grief. In this case there turned out to be no simple answer.
The murderer expressed interest in science fiction and supernatural phenomena, such as flying saucers. That sparked a notion. I suggested that he write to a fanzine: that is, one of the amateur magazines of the genre where pros and fans exchange remarks in the letter columns. I gave him information on the best one I knew, considering its frequency of publication, the variety of interests of its contributors, and its open-forum philosophy. I had been writing to it for years, taking on its hard-core conservatives. I had addressed the feminists: “I am a man. I like looking at women. That does not make me a sexist.” Indeed, I support much of the feminist agenda, and I value the company and input of women. I suspect I receive more fan letters from women than most writers of this genre, and I often have female protagonists who are sympathetically portrayed, as you may have seen in this novel. I also took on reviewers: I believe that a reviewer should indicate how well a book relates to the needs or desires of its readers, rather than pushing a private agenda. Gun control—I favor it, though the case is not clear-cut. Minimum wage—I favor raising it to keep pace with inflation. Affirmative action—I favor it, not as ideal, but the only practical way to redress a long-standing wrong. In fact, if you run your finger down the classic liberal agenda—or, if you are conservative, poke your finger up at it—you will find me there most of the time. One major exception is abortion; I don’t like it because of my objection to killing. But I don’t like the anti-abortionists either, because they seem to have little regard for the welfare of mother or baby and generally don’t seem to support the obvious method of not having babies: contraception. I took on all comers in this fanzine, being one of two blatantly liberal writers to do so, and as I see it, we showed up the conservatives as ignorant and mean-spirited clods. But fairness requires that I admit that the conservatives didn’t necessarily see it that way. One had a sense of humor about it: when I chided him for making sense on one issue, when I depended on him to be always wrong, he replied that it wasn’t his intent to make sense. It is possible for folk to disagree and still respect each other. So I thought it would be interesting if the murderer stated his case here, and let the cynics and conservatives argue his case with him. Is the death penalty a deterrent to crime, when a murderer wants to be executed and the system won’t oblige? Just why does a person commit murder? Maybe such a discussion would elicit truths which would enable society to deal more realistically with crime. Such a dialogue would also give the murderer some social interaction in a limited environment, which could be a positive thing. I’m generally interested in beating swords into plowshares, philosophically.
He was hesitant, but he did write to the fanzine. The fanzine editors were hesitant, but did publish his letter. The dialogue began. He made it a point to respond to all challenges or questions directed at him, and he made no apologies for his crime; he wanted truth, not sympathy. But once he had honestly addressed the matter, he wanted to get into other subjects of mutual interest. He wrote a positive letter—and the editors refused to run it.
They explained that they had gone to a convention, and several unnamed parties had approached them and expressed dismay at the murderer’s presence in the fanzine. So they cut him out, not for anything he said, but because of essentially anonymous objections to his presence. They said they did this to be fair to those hidden folk, and that they had a right to choose who would appear in their fanzine.