Like Contemporary Poetry, Philosophy Is One Of

In A Very Real Way, One Writes A Story To Find Out What Happens In It. Before It Is Written It Sits In The Mind Like A Piece Of Overheard Gossip Or A Bit Of Intriguing Tattle. The Story Process Is Like Taking Up Such A Piece Of Gossip, Hunting Down The People Actually Involved, Questioning Them, Finding Out What Really Occurred, And Visiting Pertinent Locations. As With Gossip, You Can't Be Too Surprised If Important Things Turn Up That Were Left Out Of The First-heard Version Entirely; Or If Points Initially Made Much Of Turn Out To Have Been Distorted, Or Simply Not To Have Happened At All.

Many Of The Early Greats Of Sf — Hugo Gernsback (publisher Of Amazing Stories) In Particular — Saw Themselves As Educators. The Didactic Thrust Of Science Fiction Got The Genre Initially Pegged As Children's Fare. It Was Seen, At Its Best, As An Extension Of School And, At Its Worst, As Teenage Wish Fulfillment.

If You Are To Stay In The Good Graces Of The Powerful, You Had Best, However Unobtrusively, Please The Servants Of The Powerful.

Fiction -- At Least For Me -- Requires Long, Relatively Uninterrupted Time Stretches In Which To Bring It To Fruition. I've Never Been A Two-hour-in-the-morning Writer, Who Could Put In Another Six Hours On Sunday Afternoon. For Me, A Novel Requires Weeks Of Living In A Largely Mental And Wholly Internal Landscape. Everything Else Has To Be Relegated To The Odd Hour Here, The Bit Of Time There. Sadly, However, Uninterrupted Time Blocks Are Not What Life Doles Out Today To Any Of Us With Regularity.

There Is A Sense Of Decency That's Like A Barometer To A Man's Or A Country's Health.