Afterword

As a teacher of writing (them as can’t, they say, teach), I suppose the most frequent question I hear from students is “where does a writer get his ideas?” I suppose there are as many answers as there are writers, but one that seems to me to cover a good deal of ground is that the writer gets his ideas when he tries to figure out something he doesn’t understand.

Let’s face it: very little in life makes much sense to a rational man. We are all soldiering in those ignorant armies that clash by night. Some people accept this and don’t worry about it. They seem to adopt a utilitarian and canine attitude and evaluate the human condition with “if you can’t eat it or drink it or screw it, piss on it.” Some people try to paint or dance or sing or love or drink or smoke some sense into life. Writers try to impose form on it.

And when you extend the purview of life into the great unknowns of eschatology and the future, the preoccupations of science fiction and fantasy, what a challenge it becomes! Then it is that reader and writer alike feel like

. . . some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.