You Always Fashioned Yourself As The Empire's

It Is An Extraordinary Act Of Courage,' Said Tulas Shorn, 'to Come To Know A Stranger's Pain.

Power Is Violence, Its Promise, Its Deed. Power Cares Nothing For Reason, Nothing For Justice, Nothing For Compassion. It Is, In Fact, The Singular Abnegation Of These Things - Once The Cloak Of Deceits Is Stripped Away, This One Truth Is Revealed.

A Story Invites Both Writer And Reader Into A Kind Of Superficial Ease: We Want To Slide Along, Pleasingly Entertained, Lost In The Fictional Dream.

Fear Bespeaks Of Wisdom. Recognition Of Responsibility.

He Was A Man Who Would Never Ask For Sympathy. He Was A Man Who Sought Only To Do What Was Right. Such People Appear In The World, Every World, Now And Then, Like A Single Refrain Of Some Blessed Song, A Fragment Caught On The Spur Of An Otherwise Raging Cacophony. Imagine A World Without Such Souls. Yes, It Should Have Been Harder To Do.