Back in the mid 90s I wrote a story. I found it 10 years later on a backup diskette. I just called the story SF2. I never did find the story that I called SF1.

I wrote the story without any idea how it would go and with no plan. I just started writing about a space ship jockey traveling the asteroid belt. He finds an old soviet nuke and is attacked by pirates. It was long and rambling.

Around 1994 I spell checked it, gave it a title, and gave it away (without payment) to a website that is now defunct. I don’t believe that anyone ever read it.

I made a stab at rewriting it a few years later, and one version made it a long way through the old Baen’s magazine before it was rejected.

Yesterday I came across it because it involved a computer program and I was looking for stories for my computer anthology. It was badly in need of a fix up so I worked on it a little yesterday and again this afternoon. I cut out 1,000 words in the middle that involved a long chase that turned out to be an impediment to the story.

I now have a more cohesive story with a different hero, new characters and a different title and ending.

There is still lots of passive tense in it and lots of info-dump. I have to do a lot of explaining about why the space jockey is out there and why there is a soviet nuke there. There is also lots of neat tech that needs explaining. It is very gadget oriented SF. and many editors want social SF of what they call character oriented SF (which is mostly based on pop psychology).

I sent it out today, so now I have 5 stories waiting in various slush piles.