I Wanted To Rub The Human Race

The Catastrophe Story, Whoever May Tell It, Represents A Constructive And Positive Act By The Imagination Rather Than A Negative One, An Attempt To Confront The Terrifying Void Of A Patently Meaningless Universe By Challenging It At Its Own Game. [. . .] Each One Of These Fantasies Represents An Arraignment Of The Finite, An Attempt To Dismantle The Formal Structure Of Time And Space Which The Universe Wraps Around Us At The Moment We First Achieve Consciousness.

The Technological Landscape Of The Present Day Has Enfranchised Its Own Electorates - The Inhabitants Of The Marketing Zones In The Consumer Society, Television Audiences And News Magazine Readerships, Who Vote With Money At The Cash Counter Rather Than With Ballot Paper At The Polling Boot. These Huge And Passive Electorates Are Wide Open To Any Opportunist Using The Psychological Weaponry Of Fear And Anxiety, Elements That Are Carefully Blanched Out Of The World Of Domestic Products And Consumer Software.

Burroughs Called His Greatest Novel Naked Lunch, By Which He Meant It's What You See On The End Of A Fork. He's A Writer Of Enormous Richness Whose Books Are A Kind Of Attempt To Blow Up This Cozy Conspiracy, To Allow Us To See What's On The End Of The Fork . . . The Truth.

The Reptiles Had Taken Over The City. Once Again They Were The Dominant Form Of Life. Looking Up At The Ancient Impassive Faces, Kerans Could Understand The Curious Fear They Roused, Rekindling Archaic Memories Of The Terrifying Jungles Of The Paleocene, When The Reptiles Had Gone Down Before The Emergent Mammals, And Sense The Implacable Hatred One Zoological Class Feels Towards Another That Usurps It.

Psychiatrists The Dominant Lay Priesthood Since The First World War.