At the time I made my sale, there were only three more issues of Unknown fated to be issued and there was no room in any of them for” Author! Author!” The story remained in the vaults of Street amp; Smith indefinitely; a story sold, but not published; and the $150 check was deprived of most of its fun as a result.

 There is, however, a happy ending. Twenty years later, Don Bensen of Pyramid Publications was publishing a paperback anthology of stories from Unknown, he asked me for an introduction. With glad nostalgia I complied, writing it on January 15, 1963, almost twenty years to the day after I had started writing the only story I ever sold to the magazine. In the course of the introduction, I referred to the sad story of my attempts to write for Unknown.

 The 1960s were not the 1940s. In 1963, the mere mention of an existing Asimov story that had never been published produced excitement, and Bensen wrote to me within three days, asking to see the story. I dug out the manuscript (I saved them now, you see, even for twenty years) and sent it to him.

 He asked permission to include it in a second anthology of Unknown stories (pointing out that it had been accepted by the magazine). I explained he would also need permission from Campbell and the publisher. They very kindly granted the permission, and in January 1964. twenty-one years after it was written, “ Author! Author!” was finally published and I finally-after a fashion, and glancingly-made Unknown.