In Reed's story, which first appeared last year in Clarkesworld Magazine, George Bailey finds himself in a foreign dimension looking at a woman who strongly resembles his wife Mary. But George isn't here to learn an important lesson about his self-worth; instead, he's been dropped here without rhyme or reason by interdimensional traveler with too much time on his hands. Fortunately, Mary, the librarian of a much more advanced civilization than George's, quickly surmises what's going on:

"Then how do you know he was an angel?"

"He said he was."

"And after you rescued him...what happened? Wait, no. Let me guess. Did your angel make noise about earning an aura or his halo-?"

"His wings."

"Really? And you believed that story?"

George gulped.

"And what did this wingless man promise you, George."

"To show me..."

"What?"

"How the world would be if I'd never been born."

She couldn't help but laugh again. Really, this man seemed so sweet and so terribly lost. She was curious, even intrigued. Not that the stranger was her type, of course. But then again, this was a remarkable situation, and maybe if she gave him a chance...

It may not be a heartwarming tale of personal redemption, but it's an interesting tale of parallel worlds, and an optimistic one in its own right.

A Woman's Best Friend [Clarkesworld Magazine]

Reader Goldfarb pointed us to Call Me Joe, a novella written in 1957 by Golden Age science fiction writer Poul Anderson. Many fans of Anderson suspect that the story was an important influence on Avatar, and some are calling for Anderson to be credited on the film. And it's easy to see why.

Like Avatar, Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic — Ed Anglesey — who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like Avatar's Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength of his artificial created body, battles predators on the surface of Jupiter, and gradually goes native as he spends more time connected to his artificial body.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being inspired or influenced by other writers, and Cameron has mentioned a host of influences for Avatar: Dances with Wolves, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs. But it's odd, given some remarkable similarities in the plots, that he doesn't appear to have mentioned Anderson as a specific inspiration.

Should the similarities between Avatar and Call Me Joe cause problems for Cameron, it wouldn't be the first time. After The Terminator came out, writer Harlan Ellison sued the production company for plagiarizing two episodes he wrote for The Outer Limits. Even though Cameron took Ellison's ideas in a very different and novel direction, the company settled with Ellison, who is now acknowledged in the film's credits.

Avatar may be, by and large, an original film, much as The Terminator is. But there may be firmer roots beneath his story than Cameron has acknowledged thus far.

Today at noon EST (that's 9am Pacific time), Gaiman will begin an exquisite corpse story on the BBC Audiobooks America Twitter account with a single tweet. Other Twitter users can then contribute to the story with their own tweets (all tweets must include @BBCAA and #bbcawdio, cutting into those precious 140 characters). Once the tale reaches 1000 tweets, the BBC editors will edit it into a (hopefully) coherent story. An audio version of the story will be made available in the iTunes store for free.

Collaborative storytelling via Twitter may sound like a recipe for a narrative mess, but it has been done with some success. Just last month, the Royal Opera House premiered Twitterämmerung, a 20-minute opera whose libretto was composed by 900 Twitter users.

Neil Gaiman and the BBC Will Let You Twitter a Story For Them [EW]

Heinlein and John W. Campbell were already friendly when he wrote him this letter on November 2, 1940. Heinlein had seen a short-story contest advertisement in another magazine, and wrote a story for it. Later he decided the story, called "Life-Line," was too good for the contest, so he sent it to Astounding. Campbell immediately accepted the story at 1 cent per word, which meant a total of $70 for the whole thing. (It appeared in the Astounding at right, and you can read it here.)

In this letter — reproduced in Grumbles from the Grave, a collection of such letters — Heinlein seeks to the settle his arrangement with Astounding, and perhaps reconcile his own warring self.

He starts by describing how he rejected an offer of work from another magazine:

.. . I turned it down, stating that the rate for my own name was higher than that. (I may let them publish "Lost Legacy" under a pseudonym, as it is one that I really want to see published. I am going to give a slight amount of rewriting to make it science fiction rather than fantasy, but still let it say the things I want it to say.)

Having touched on my personal policy to that extent, I feel obliged to be more specific, since it concerns you, too. I am going up, or out, in this business — never down. I don't want to write pulp bad enough to slip back into a lower word rate, a hack attitude. As long as you are editing, at Street and Smith or elsewhere, you can have my stuff, if you want it, at a cent and a quarter a word, or more if you see fit and the business office permits. I won't use an agent in dealing with you, although I now have one. Neither my name nor the name of Anson MacDonald will be made available to any other book at the rate at which you buy from me, and, if I get an offer of a better rate, I will let you know and give you refusal, as it were, before switching. I write for money and will sell elsewhere for a materially higher word rate but I feel a strong obligation to you. No other editor will get the two names you have advertised and built up at the rate you pay.

I seem to have drifted a long way from stating my own policy and intentions. I will probably go on writing, at least part time, indefinitely. If you someday find it necessary to start rejecting my stuff, I expect to take a crack at some other forms, slick perhaps, and book-form novels, and in particular a non-fiction book on finance and money theory which I have wanted to do for a long time, also some articles on various economic and social problems. I have an outlet for such things, but it would be largely a labor of love - maybe ten dollars for an article into which has gone a week of research, and slim royalties on books in that field. Howsomever, I might crack the high word rates on general fiction at the same time. One never knows - I never expected to be writing pulp, or fiction of any sort, but it has paid me well...to my surprise!

Addendum to remarks about my own policy: You may possibly feel that my wish to get out of the field of science fiction and into something else smacks of ungratefulness, in the view of the way you have treated me. That is the very reason why I am looking forward to another field. I dislike very much to have business relations with a close personal friend. The present condition in which you like and buy everything I write may go on for years. If so — fine! Everybody is happy. But it would be no pleasure to you to have to reject my stuff, and certainly no pleasure to me. And it can happen at any time — your editorial policy may change, or my style or approach may change, or I simply may go stale. When it does occur, I want to cut if off short without giving it a chance to place a strain on our friendship. I don't want it to reach a point where you would view the reception of one my manuscripts with a feeling of, "For Christ's sake, why doesn't he peddle his tripe somewhere else. He knows I hate to turn him down." And I don't want to greet a series of returned manuscripts in my mailbox with a feeling of, "Good God, what does he expect for a cent and a quarter a word? The New Testament?" Nor do I want you taking borderline stories from me simply because you hate to bounce them. I suspected that might be the case with the tesseract story.

'Heinlein Gets The Last Word' by Kurt Vonnegut on December 9, 1990 [The New York Times]

About his story, Cornell writes:

Major John Hamilton serves with the 4th Dragoon Regiment of the British army in a present day rather unlike our own. Because of a single difference in the timeline that I haven't yet revealed, the empires of Europe remain in place, and have indeed spread out to compete in the colonisation of the solar system, and the Great Game espionage cold war between them continues on many fronts. Indeed, the concept of a great balance to be kept has seeped into the fabric of these civilisations in all sorts of ways. Hamilton is often called upon to work out of uniform, as what we'd these days call an intelligence officer, intervening in the plans of rival empires.

Hamilton himself is damaged, vulnerable, but also terse, repressed and honourable, though his concept of honour is shaped by his society. He can be horribly dangerous to those who get in the way of his duty, but he feels a need to be tender with innocents. He's not cruel in everyday life, but he can be something of a sadist when his mission and the nature of his enemy gives him leave to be. Indeed, he lets himself enjoy those moments of release. His relationships with women are complicated and rare. I like to think I'm writing in the tradition of Ian Fleming's Bond novels (not the movies) but I'm trying to stay away from pastiche, and instead hope to explore the same debates about masculinity and Britishness he did, while perhaps coming to different conclusions. I also hope this is serious SF in all sorts of ways, and that the politics and tactics make them genuine espionage stories too, but that they're also, well, fun!

You can read the story online this afternoon, and then you'll want to scarf down the whole amazing short story collection, which includes new stories from Cory Doctorow, Pat Cadigan, Paolo Bacigalupi, and more.

Catherine Drewe, by Paul Cornell [via Pyr]

The story is called "The Last Question," and it has something of a fairy tale structure, beginning once upon a time when two drunk programmers ask the first AI how to reverse the process of entropy. Then we see snapshots of humankind as it evolves over the next several billion years, as they reap the benefits of having invented nearly-inexhaustible energy. Still, the problem of entropy plagues them. How do you live forever and transcend humanness if you can't defeat the heat death of the universe. Could an AI come up with the answer. Check out this old-school science fiction tale about a computer trying to answer the ultimate question. Image from Phil's PDP10 Page.

"The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov [Multivax] (Thanks, PT!)

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, arguably one of the best American writers. Mork & Mindy was written by Garry Marshall, arguably one of the best American television creators. Winner: dead heat.
• Mork's son Mearth was born after Mork and Mindy got it on and Mork laid an egg, freaking everyone out. Benjamin Button was born in a hospital (against the common wisdom of the day which was to give birth at home), and freaked the hell out of everyone. Winner: Benjamin Button.
• Mearth was played by TV funnyman and impressionist Jonathan Winters, while Benjamin Button will be played by tabloid target and one time Pringles pitchman Brad Pitt. Winner: Mearth. Winters used to crack me up when I was a kid, sue me.
• Mearth ages backwards, which means you have Jonathan Winters asking like a baby and talking in a goo-goo voice most of the time. Benjamin Button also ages backwards, but talks in a normal voice. Winner: Benjamin Button. Jonathan Winters is definitely funny, but that baby voice gets annoying.
• As evidenced in the photo above, Brad Pitt has to wear some old man makeup to look like the elder Benjamin Button, whereas Winters was already fairly older when playing his part, so no makeup was required. However, the movie is also putting the cool new Contour 3D cgi mapping systemto use in order to make synthetic old people, which is a catapult to coolness. Winner: Benjamin Button. We love high-tech aging systems.
• Mearth's special "aging problem" led to much hijinx and sitcom wackiness and Mork and Mindy tried to hide their rotund, overall-wearing son from the neighbors, while Benjamin Button gets to examine his life in reverse, leading to lessons and touching moments, probably with swelling music. Winner: Benjamin Button. We're a sucker for a good musical score.
• Mork & Mindy was directed by a slew of different television directors, including Garry Marshall. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is being directed by David Fincher, who also gave us The Game (yes!), Alien 3 (boo!), Fight Club (rad!), Panic Room (bad!), and Se7en (woot!). Winner, Benjamin Button. David Fincher's worth the risk.

Early Buzz: David Fincher's 'The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button' [/Film]