I never do a full outline, and if I did, I would not feel bound to it, because the view from inside a scene can be different from the view outside it. But neither do I just start writing and see what happens; I am far more disciplined than that.

Bink knew the dolphin only from old pictures; it was a kind of magic fish that breathed air instead of water.

Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series also shows the potential of lighter fantastic fiction. I read the first, and listened to a tape of a later one, and it's fun.

Be what you are; it is better that way. --Dolph

Polishing: a useful lesson for the hopeful writer. You say your tormented prose doesn't read as well as mine? Neither does mine, at first!

SF is the literature of the theoretically possible, and F is the literature of the impossible.

For our stories are not yet finished, and perhaps will never be.