Woman

When I am asked how I got the idea for any particular novel, I can (usually)
provide an answer.
For I Am Legend, it came while I was viewing Bela Lugosi's
Dracula. It occurred to me that if one vampire is scary, what if the whole world
was full of vampires?

For The Shrinking Man, the idea came during another movie I was viewing. Many
of my ideas came from movies - most likely not very good movies. A good movie
does not create ideas since I am totally involved in it. A poor movie, on the
other hand, might have some small element which brings on my imagination. So it
was with this film. In a brief moment, which had nothing to do with the overall
story Ray Milland unwittingly dons Aldo Ray's hat. His head being smaller than
Ray's, the hat comes down over his ears. What, it came to me, would Ray Milland
think if it was his own hat which now was too big for his head? Thus the genesis
of a story about a man who discovers that he is shrinking.

For Hell House the notion arose as a result of many years of reading about
haunted houses topped by a reading of Shirley Jackson's novel about Hill House.
She never (in my memory) indicated the presence of an actual ghost. At least she
never described one. The ghosts she had in mind were more than likely created by
the psyche of one of the two women who came to the house. They were
psychological ghosts brought on-or released-by the dark atmosphere of the
house.

I didn't choose to go that route. I wanted my house to contain tangible
ghosts. While the atmosphere of Hell House certainly has an effect on the minds
of its quartet of invaders, visible, audible ghosts exist as well.

And for A Stir of Echoes recollections of a tract house my wife and I-and our
two (then) children lived in-plus a desire (motivated by a beginning dislike of
the "genre" concept) to combine a ghost story with a murder mystery brought on
that novel.

For Woman . . . nothing. No memory whatsoever of its creative
birth.
It seems most peculiar to me that such a (I hope) provocative concept
came to me and left no trace of its genesis.

My wife has suggested that a three-year period during which I was writing a
six-hour television adaptation of Philip Wylie's The Disappearance brought on
the notion.

In Wylie's story, half of the disappearance results in a world populated
exclusively by women, with the logical results of that condition. As I recall,
the world, struggling back from technological limitations, does become a
workable, more humane society-while the other half of the world, exclusively
men, goes (rather rapidly) all to hell. As it probably would.

It certainly seems a reasonable idea that this adaptation (never filmed, I
add regretfully; another unrealized dream) engendered the germ of an idea which
ultimately became Woman, first a play (as yet unstaged), then the novel which
you just (I assume) read.

I don't remember it happening that way, however. Even more strangely, I don't

recall research reading on the subject although, obviously, I did, quoting a
number of sources in the novel.
 So, how did it happen? Did I channel
some otherworldly manuscript? Did I contact Philip Wylie while I was
sleeping?
 I doubt any of that. It's my concept, my story. Still, that a
concept so specific, a concept rather unique (I think) should not be clearly
deposited in my memory bank remains perplexing to me.
 However, I
imagine that any number of story and novel ideas I've come up with in the past
60-plus years have no source remembrance in my mind.
 With regard to
Woman, though, I have for many years certainly subscribed to its
concept.
 That the so-termed female revolution (feminism) has resulted
in many major alternations in society-alterations positive to the world--goes (I
hope) without saying. Women in business, women in politics, women in education,
women in religion, women in all areas of society itself.
 But is it
enough? Has Nature (Mother Nature I feel compelled to add) come to the ultimate,
albeit reluctant conclusion that revolution is not enough? That evolution must
now perforce be activated in order to conclude Man's unending destruction of the
world and all living things on its surface?
What more is there to
say? Could be.