If Our God's Work Is To Be

We Are All Eaters Of Souls.

I Despair At The Rise Of Modern Violence. I Truly Give In To Despair At Times, That Deep, Futureless Pit Of Despair.... I Watch The American Slaughterhouse, The Casual Attacks On Popes, Presidents, And Uncounted Others, And I Wonder If There Are Many More Out There With The Ability Or If Butchery Has Simply Become The Modern Way Of Life.

But I Think, And Hope, That The Novels Can Be Understood And Enjoyed As Science Fiction, On Their Own Terms.

There Were Reprints Of American Editorials. Liberals Saw It As A Resurgence Of Social Protest And Decried The Discrimination, Poverty, And Hunger That Had Provoked It. Conservative Columnists Acidly Pointed Out That Hungry People Don't Steal Stereo Systems First And Called For A Crackdown In Law Enforcement. All Of The Reasoned Editorials Sounded Hollow In Light Of The Perverse Randomness Of The Event. It Was As If Only A Thin Wall Of Electric Lighting Protected The Great Cities Of The World From Total Barbarism.

You've Probably Heard About The Theory Of Steam-engine Time - That Even After The Steam Engine Had Been Invented, It Had To Wait Until People Were Ready To Make Use Of It. The Same Thing Happens In Literary Circles. The Truth Is, I'm Not Terribly Interested In Victorian Times; I'm Interested In Victorian Writers. I'm Interested In Most Eras Of History, But Not The Victorian Era Especially. I Was Interested In The John Franklin Expedition. I Was Interested In These Last Five Weird Years Of Dickens' Life. And I Just Have To Take The Age That Comes With All That When I Write About It.