Preface

Of the dozens of stories I produced during my 20s, these are the thirteen I think are worth saving. Many of them were written in or near graduate writing programs, so they often embody a certain daring irrelevance. Others were wild attempts to break into the commercial science-fiction market. Increasingly, I tried to do both at the same time. The result was some of my better work: "Incantation," "Evil Spirits Travel In Straight Lines" (The Bridge, Winter 2000), "Khodoki" (Bellowing Ark, July/August 1998) -- none of which really fits into "genre" science-fiction and has therefore had to eek out a meager existence in literary magazines. But I am not bitter! On the contrary, I am thankful to have had leisure time to spend in coffee houses finding my way with a pen and paper. I have been poor, but here you see the triumphs of those many blank, open spaces in my resume, those months I passed unrecorded by the technocracy. These tales may not have rewritten the history of letters, but hopefully they will serve as a record of a writer finding a voice and a direction. They are exercises and experiments, hence the title of the collection. They are ten years of exercises, going back to my first published story, "Match Heads" (Foxtail, 1991). Pynchon published a landmark novel when he was 24. I, sadly, am already 30. My skin is sickly and puffy-looking; I am being worn down into oblivion. The marks I leave on the world are rapidly washed away, like footprints in the sand. We all must race against our own deaths to accomplish some bit of machinery that might -- we dream eternally as a species -- carry the light of our spirits forward, beyond our years. Like you and everyone else, I can only go forward, at my steady, snail's pace, and hope that I will arrive safely, someday, on the other side.

Sheldon Pacotti Austin, Texas: July 20, 2000