Vatican, ultimul conclav

Ever since I read Baron Corvo’s remarkable novel HADRIAN THE SEVENTH long ago I have amused myself with the fantasy of being elected Pope – an ambition complicated to some degree by the fact that I am not in holy orders, nor a Roman Catholilc, nor, indeed, any kind of Christian at all. But I do live in the hope that the Church will some day see fit to make use of my services.

In my pursuit of this not entirely serious career plan I’ve learned a good deal about the rituals and tensions surrounding the election of a pontiff. This led me, one chilly but lighthearted day in February, 1971, to produce this sly, playful story of the accession of the first robot to the Holy See. (The robot is meant to be my own successor, though I make the point very subtly indeed in the final paragraph.) I sold the story to my friend Terry Carr, who was then putting together the firsrt volume of his fine anthology series UNIVERSE. Somehow it caught everybody’s attention and in the spring of 1973 it earned me a Nebula award for that year’s best short story, the second of five such awards I would win over the decades