I have had more success selling A Fond Farewell to Dying in its various incarnations to publishers than I have selling it to readers. That’s a shame, because it’s a pretty good book.

Today, accurate clones in SF are common but it wasn’t always so. It used to be, usually on TV or in movies, that a clone would come into existence with the memories and personality of its donor. Of course, an actual clone would be no closer than a twin, and I wanted to set that right.

I also wanted to show contrasts between Hinduism and Christianity, between atman and soul, between rebirth and the continuation into the afterlife of an unchanged consciousness. I wanted to explore a post-flood world where America was a half flooded backwater (no pun intended) and India was the leading nation. Incidentally, this was decades before anyone was talking about global warming, so I did it in the crude old-SF fashion; I dropped thermonuclear devices on the San Andreas fault.

I wanted to create my own Lazarus Long, I wanted to have the fun of taking science fiction to an entirely new setting, and I wanted to get some mileage out of all those years I’d spent studying South Asia.

A Fond Farewell to Dying was my fourth novel. Part way through the writing, it became apparent that the first third, slightly modified, would make a good novella. I sent it around while I continued the novel and John J. Pierce of Galaxy magazine bought it. He didn’t like the name and suggested To Go Not Gently, after Dylan Thomas’s poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. Of course I agreed. It became my first fiction sale and the cover story of the last issue of Galaxy. Or what looked like the last issue at that time; Galaxy subsequently had more resurrections than my lead character.

The odd name A Fond Farewell to Dying had actually come about because Robert Burns’ poem Ae Fond Kiss, and then We Sever was floating around in my head when I needed a title.

A few months after the novella came out, Jandrax was published. Two years later the novel version of Fond Farewell was published in the first Pocket/Timescape release. Two years after that, it was sold for German translation as Todesgesanga (Death Song).

It went mostly unreviewed, which is not unusual for a new author, but the few who spoke of it were positive. Despite all that, it never found its readership.

These things happen. Even twenty-five years later I find Jandrax in every used bookstore, but I rarely see Fond Farewell. That tells you a lot about their relative sales.

I have no reason to whine. Timescape Books, which published Fond Farewell, produced over 100 paperback titles in four years, including many Hugo and Nebula winners, then died quietly because it wasn’t making enough money for its parent company. Publishing is a harsh game.

It would be poor sportsmanship to blame the cover, but it was confusing, with an angel blowing his trumpet and a bunch of weird zombie looking people coming out of jack-in-the-boxes. I understand the metaphor, but it was probably lost on anyone who hadn’t read the book yet. I do know that booksellers didn’t always understand it, because I saw it in my local supermarket on a rack of religious books. If anyone bought it there, they were in for quite a shock.

If you wander over to the Serials section of this website, you will find the novella version now being presented. For free – what do you have to lose?