The Future Continues To Preoccupy Me As

It Could Be Argued That Every Age Gets The Comfort Savagery Writer It Deserves.

One Of The Most Heartening Phenomena In Today's Britain Is The Great Diversity Of The Modern Nerd - The Nerd Is Out And Proud, And While She May Love 'buffy The Vampire Slayer' Merchandise More Than Is Strictly Warranted, She Is In Every Way To Be Cherished As An Exemplar Of Cosmopolitanism And Tolerance.

The Marvellous Thing About Writing, Whether It Be Fiction Or Journalism, Is That It Is Simultaneously The Most Intimate And The Most Anonymous Of Meetings Between People. It Is Profoundly Intimate In Reaching Into The Psyche Of Another, At The Same Time As Being Devoid Of Social Characteristics, Cultural Characteristics, Economic Characteristics.

Television Is The Same As The Telephone, And The Same As The World Wide Web For That Matter. People Who Become Obsessed By The Peculiarities Of These Communications Media Have Simply Failed To Adjust To The Shock Of The Old. People Who Bleat On About The 'artistic' Potential Of Television Qua Television Are Equally Deluded.

Life, It Is True, Can Be Grasped In All Its Confused Futility Merely By Opening One's Eyes And Sitting Passively, A Spectator On The Stands Of History - But To Understand The Social Processes And Conflicts, The Interplay Between Individual And Group, Even The Physicality Of Human Experience, We Have Need Of Small-scale Models.