Behind Every Writer Stands A Very Large

We Live, We Die. Somewhere Along The Way, If We're Lucky, We May Find Someone To Help Lighten The Load.

And I Grew Up On A Steady Diet Of Science Fiction, Especially Apocalyptic And Postapocalyptic Fiction.

Kittredge Had Obviously Misjudged Her, But He Had Learned That Was The Way With Most People. The Story Was Never The Story, And It Surprised You, How Much Another Person Could Carry.

A Baby Was A Fact. It Was A Being With A Mind And A Nature, And You Could Feel About It Any Way You Liked, But A Baby Wouldn't Care. Just By Existing, It Demanded That You Believe In A Future: The Future It Would Crawl In, Walk In, Live In. A Baby Was A Piece Of Time; It Was A Promise You Made That The World Made Back To You.

In Her Mind's Eye She Saw It, Saw It All At Last: The Rolling Armies And The Flames Of Battle; The Graves And Pits And Dying Cries Of A Hundred Million Souls; The Spreading Darkness, Like A Black Wing Stretching Over The Earth; The Last, Bitter Hours Of Cruelty And Sorrow, And The Terrible, Final Flights; Death's Great Dominion Over All, And, At The Last, Empty Cities, Becalmed By The Silence Of A Hundred Years. Already These Things Were Coming To Pass.