I Wouldn't Like To Be A Character

Stories Set In The Culture In Which Things Went Wrong Tended To Start With Humans Losing Or Forgetting Or Deliberately Leaving Behind Their Terminal. It Was A Conventional Opening, The Equivalent Of Straying Off The Path In The Wild Woods In One Age, Or A Car Breaking Down At Night On A Lonely Road In Another.

Intellectual Achievement. The Exercise Of Skill. Human Feeling.

Smell Is A Very Animal Thing, Almost Reptilian, Where The More Cerebral Things Like Reading Less So.

In Theory, I Work An Eight-hour Day And A Five-day Week Which Means I Can Socialise With My Pals Who Mostly Have Normal Jobs Like Teaching And Computer Programming.

Science Fiction Has Its Own History, Its Own Legacy Of What's Been Done, What's Been Superseded, What's So Much Part Of The Furniture It's Practically Part Of The Fabric Now, What's Become No More Than A Joke... And So On. It's Just Plain Foolish, As Well As Comically Arrogant, To Ignore All This, To Fail To Do The Most Basic Research.