I Was A 'planet Of The Apes'-obsessed

I Came To Houston For A Job, The Reason Most People Move Halfway Across The Country With A First Grader And A Five-week-old. I Came Here To Teach At Rice.

I Grew Up During The Cold War, When Everything Seemed Very Tenuous. For Many Years, Right Up Until The Fall Of The Berlin Wall, I Had Vivid Nightmares Of Nuclear Apocalypse.

There Was Something In The Pages Of These Books That Had The Power To Make Him Feel Better About Things, A Life Raft To Cling To Before The Dark Currents Of Memory Washed Him Downstream Again, And On Brighter Days, He Could Even See Himself Going On This Way For Some Time. A Small But Passable Life. And Then, Of Course, The End Of The World Happened.

I Like To Break Left When People Think I'm Going To Go Right.

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