The Truth Is Always Multiplex.

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.

Now For Me, You're The Irreplaceable One: I've Never See You Up So Close Before, And I Do Not Understand You At All. You Say Sometimes I Act Like I Don't See You? I Don't Even Know Where To Look! Living With You Around Is Like Is Like Living With A Permanent Dazzle. The Fact That You Even Like Me, Or Look At Me, Or Brush By Me, Or Hug Me, Or Hold Me, Is So Surprising That After It's Over I Have To Go Back Through It A Dozen Times In My Head To Savor It And Try And Figure Out What It Was Like Because I Was Too Busy Being Astounded While It Was Happening.

Fiction -- At Least For Me -- Requires Long, Relatively Uninterrupted Time Stretches In Which To Bring It To Fruition. I've Never Been A Two-hour-in-the-morning Writer, Who Could Put In Another Six Hours On Sunday Afternoon. For Me, A Novel Requires Weeks Of Living In A Largely Mental And Wholly Internal Landscape. Everything Else Has To Be Relegated To The Odd Hour Here, The Bit Of Time There. Sadly, However, Uninterrupted Time Blocks Are Not What Life Doles Out Today To Any Of Us With Regularity.

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

Apocalypse Has Come And Gone. We're Just Grubbing In The Ashes.