If This Goes Badly And I Make

By The Usual Reckoning, The Worst Books Make The Best Films.

Dead Air' Is Full Of Rants; It's A Rant-based Book. Yes, It's Self-indulgence. I Plead Guilty; Mea Culpa.

The Bomb Lives Only As It Is Falling.

It Was A Truism That All Civilizations Were Basically Neurotic Until They Made Contact With Everybody Else And Found Their Place Within The Ever-changing Meta-civilisation Of Other Beings, Because, Until Then, During The Stage When They Honestly Believed They Might Be Entirely Alone In Existence, All Solo Societies Were Possessed Of Both An Inflated Sense Of Their Own Importance And A Kind Of Existential Terror At The Sheer Scale And Apparent Emptiness Of The Universe.

Mr Blawke Always Reminded Me Of A Heron; I'm Not Sure Why. Something To Do With A Sense Of Rapacious Stillness, Perhaps, And Also The Aura Of One Who Knows Time Is On His Side.