"To handle the issue [terrorist action in "The Wind from a Burning Woman"] honestly, I had to make the “Burning Woman” fight for a cause that I, myself, would cherish. One editor, reading the story for an anthology on space colonies, rejected it because it didn’t overtly support the cause. It would have been dishonest to force the story into such a mold; however pleasant or unpleasant the result, my stories must work themselves out within their own framework, not according to some market principle or philosophical bias. It may be remarkable that, with such views, I’ve come as far as I have in publishing."
--Greg Bear from the "Preface" to The Wind from a Burning Woman.
I invited Greg Bear to write for an anthology that proposed a fascinating new ethos. And he said, "Stay away from ethos." My point was an SF-nal one: So many interesting ways of seeing the world. Let's go for a swim. He could have played the game yet opposed the ethos, too.
His perspective, I think, could be summed up by the above. Each story has it's own way of thinking. Even as I felt he'd misunderstood, I admired as his staunch position about the writer being outside any set of predisposed rules.
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