"The Author's Ordeal" are lyrics to a song by American author Isaac Asimov. They were first published in Science Fiction Quarterly, May 1957, pp. 34–36. They are included in three collections of Asimov's short stories: Earth Is Room Enough, The Far Ends of Time and Earth (omnibus edition) and The Complete Stories, Volume 1.[1]
The lyrics pastiche the Gilbert and Sullivan patter song known as "the (Lord Chancellor's) Nightmare Song" from Iolanthe. The song depicts the agonies he goes through in thinking up a new science fiction story. It notes that the process of devising a space opera is incompatible with living in the real world with all its "dull facts of life that hound you".
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