David Black, deep into a successful career as a novelist and TV producer, looks back on the frustrations and failures at the start—and the celebrated writer who helped him through them.

Few books stand the test of time. George Gilder’s “Sexual Suicide” is one of them.

“The nuclear family is not natural. In the two million years hominids have walked the earth, families as we know them only appeared in the last, ten-thousand years.”