DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN

by Bruce Golden

When you talk about "wishing you had it to do over again" or going back and changing one thing in your life, you have to realize that you would be tinkering with your entire timeline. It's like the time paradoxes of countless science fiction tales. You change one little thing and that alters an infinite amount of outcomes.

We've all thought about "what if I hadn't done this" or "if I had done that," but have we really pondered the consequences of such do-overs? You could wish you never entered into that failed marriage, but then you wouldn't have the children you now have and love so dearly. You might have had aspirations for a different profession, but who knows if you would have ended up a disbarred lawyer or a disgraced politician.

Like anyone, I have regrets--things I wished I'd done differently. If I were to fantasize such a scenario (without having to worry about the consequences of the "butterfly effect"), I would wonder how my career would have evolved, had I made different choices.

As a teenager, I decided I wanted to write science fiction and fantasy, and follow in the footsteps of my favorite authors at the time--Roberts Heinlein and Howard. However, my initial foray into fiction was disrupted by being drafted into the Army. When I got out, I started working in various journalistic endeavors to help pay my way through college. One job led to another, and, before I knew it, I was making a living working in newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. Along the way I tinkered with fiction, but I was supporting a wife and a son, and there were bills to be paid. It wasn't until the turn of the century that I found myself in a position to walk away from journalism and concentrate solely on my first love--fiction.

All those years working as a professional writer/editor/producer certainly improved my skills, and, without a doubt, made it possible to be the writer I am today. But I often wonder where I'd be, and what I might have written, had I devoted myself exclusively to fiction all those years.

Novelist, journalist, satirist, Bruce Golden’s short stories have been published more than 100 times across 11 countries and 15 anthologies. Asimov’s Science Fiction described his second novel, “If Mickey Spillane had collaborated with both Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick, he might have produced Bruce Golden’s Better Than Chocolate”--and about his novel Evergreen, "If you can imagine Ursula Le Guin channeling H. Rider Haggard, you'll have the barest conception of this stirring book, which centers around a mysterious artifact and the people in its thrall." You can read more of Golden's stories in his recently published collection Dancing with the Velvet Lizard. Visit Bruce on his website.