Ad Astra by Jack Campbell Page B

never known where Haven is. And I thought you said Haven isn’t real.”
    “No, I said there isn’t any one place which all sailors could call Haven. But it does exist.”
    Riddles. I couldn’t handle them at the moment and broke eye contact with her, staring up at the overhead. “Then where is it?”
    “Kilcannon, you fool. Haven is that place you most want to be, the place that holds everything important to you.”
    When I looked down again she was walking away. I wondered what she’d meant.
    Saints, I miss the Lady .

Author's Note on As You Know, Bob
    Reviews are often the bane of writers. This is especially true if the reviewer chooses to write about the book they wish the writer had written rather than the one the writer did write. Sometimes the reviewers’ complaints leave writers scratching their heads in bewilderment. And sometimes that all works out fine. When the first book in my Lost Fleet series was published, one reviewer took Dauntless to task for many perceived sins. Among these were assertions that it wasn’t multi-cultural enough, and didn’t contain explicit references to trendy new science fiction concepts, and above all didn’t explain in detail how everything worked. In short, I was being called to task for not having done the sort of things for which SF is often mocked by the wider world. The reviewer concluded that Dauntless could have appeared in John W. Campbell’s old Astounding magazine. As it turned out, many readers yearned for that sort of story, so the put-down ended up generating a lot of sales for me. In addition, the review inspired As You Know, Bob . I got a lot of good things out of that negative review.

As You Know, Bob
    The agent: How’s that science fiction novel you’ve been working on coming along? Send me an excerpt from the beginning so we can see about getting it into shape for today’s market.
    #
    The story begins: The phone rang with Bob’s signature tune, so Bill tapped the receive button. Bob’s face appeared, looking unusually enthusiastic since he normally tried to coast through life with minimum effort. “Did you hear about the frozen Lumpia?”
    “Not yet.” Lumpia. That sounded important enough for Bill to pause his work and face the phone. “As you know, Bob, frozen Lumpia isn’t nearly as good as fresh.”
    “This stuff is! There’s a new process. Meet me in the lobby and we’ll go get some and check it out.”
    Bill’s conscience tugged at him. “I dunno, there’s this analysis of the signals from the Eridani Probe that I’m supposed to be running . . .”
    “It’ll be there when we get back.”
    “Okay.” Bill stood up, powering down his workpad and heading for the door.
    In the hallway he met Jane, a researcher who worked a few doors down. Bill tried not to stare as she crossed her arms and looked at him. “You’re in a rush. Going on some important mission?” she asked dryly.
    “I guess you could say that. I’m going to pick up some frozen Lumpia.” Bill hesitated. Jane had the kind of smarts and attitude that had always attracted him, but she had never shown much interest in Bill and had turned him down the one time he had asked for a date. Maybe she would be willing to consider a more casual errand together. “Do you want to come along?”
Jane pulled out a money card and checked it, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I need to pick up some stuff, too.”
    #
    The agent: This is okay, but I can’t sell it. Something’s missing. It’s not SciFi enough, do you know what I mean? This is supposed to be happening in the early twenty-second century and there’s nothing about the singularity or nanotech or quantum states or cyberspace or posthumans or multiculturalism or complex antiheroes. How can you call that SciFi? I know, I know, you’ve told me that when people use tools they don’t think about how they work. But readers expect certain things from SciFi. Oh, and the characters. Those aren’t SciFi characters. Punch them up