Harlan writes about the story: “Think of someone you know, even someone you love, trapped into a corrupt or self-destructive or anti-social behavior pattern by an inability to get around the roadblock of erroneous thinking. [snip] Polly wouldn’t permit such an evil to exist-as an unconscious understanding of the massmind of the general Analog readership, which is at core and primarily engineers, technicians, scientists, men of the drawing board and the spanner. [snip] [I wrote the story] to see if I could gig the Analog readers of thirty-and-more years’ good standing, who would have coronary arrest at seeing Ellison in the hallowed pages of their favorite magazine. You can imagine my joy when I saw the issue on the newsstands, with my name on the front cover with Isaac Asimov’s, knowing that Analog’s faithful would be gagging, and knowing the little jibe I had waiting for them inside”…
I always get the feeling when I read either Harlan Ellison or Philip K Dick that they're giggling to themselves at some knowledge that they have, that no-one else has. They both play with form, straddle the line between puerile and innovative, and seemingly come up with original ideas with a wave of their hands.
They're both definitely in my favourite author list, of any genre.
