Science fiction for most of the half-century of my involvement ran in accord with my own synchronous flood of essays and culminated in the last decade with the world-snake as controlling metaphor. Metaphor for a field which — like the Constitutionally-based Republic — has been almost from its modern origin in 1926 avidly consuming itself. Essentially science fiction was about its own self-destruction, just as the Constitutional Republic was assembled upon a document which made clear every step by which it could be subverted. This collection explores the issue and comes closer than any aggregation of stories of single authorship. "The Denier" could have been an equally satisfactory title for this collection for the field is based upon the denial of its centering premise. Ad astra per aspera? Not exactly. Think again, ladies and gents.
Andrew Fox has come closer to documenting, to exposing this core than all but few of us earlier; these stories could have been conceived (although written in a different way) by Alfred Bester (1913–1987), the transgressive genius self-smuggled into the genre. This collection is at the heart of the heart of the country. It suggests that the true protocol was always to challenge and consume the very fields of fire through which it sometimes strolled, sometimes cantered, occasionally brutally marched.
Remarkable work in an incendiary time. The Truest Quill.
—August 2020: New Jersey
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