The Truth Is Always Multiplex.

The Poems ... Are Moments When I Had The Intensity To See, And The Energy To Build, Some Careful Analog That Completed The Seeing. ... All I Have Been Left Is The Exhausting Habit Of Trying To Tack Up The Slack In My Life With Words.

Pain ... After You've Lived With It Long Enough, Isn't Pain Anymore. It's Something Else.

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.

The Past Is What Makes Now Like Now Makes Tomorrow.