Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by ...
Your Barney?” Cole’s eyebrows shot up. “Yours?” “He’s mine all right!” Claire replied. “Everyone in this family belongs to everyone else – belongs with everyone else, rather. I’ve looked after him for a year now – ironed his shi...
Sometimes Alton Darwin would talk to me about the planet he was on before he was transported in a steel box to Athena. 'Drugs were food,' he said. 'I was in the food business. Just because people on one planet eat a certain kind of food they're hungr...
It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings' heads that the wh...
Did you like question ten, Moony?" asked Sirius as they emerged into the entrance hall. "Loved it," said Lupin briskly. "Give five signs that identify the werewolf. Excellent question." "D'you think you managed to get all the signs?" said James in to...
The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogm...
He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning...
I saw Dad's eyes widen just a fraction when he heard my voice catch. He glanced at me but quickly turned away. He didn't want me to see his reaction, but I did, and I'll never forget it. In that brief glimpse, I could see what he was thinking behind ...
The instant the old folks had entered their codes and the Harmony program had begun to sing, suicide disappeared from human society. Nearly all battles ceased. The individual was no longer a unit. The entire social system was the unit. By losing its ...
After I binged last night -or was it tonight - I was convinced yet again that there were people coming to get me. It was more than just shadows and voices, more than just fantasies....it was real, and I was scared to my core. My bones were shaking......
You know what I was thinking about on my way home? How different my life would be if you’d made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I’d vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? ...
Some people were simply created with the right genes and the proper social skills, I figured. They ended up at a lunch table with a group of good-looking individuals, like them, who did what all good-looking individuals managed: making the rest of us...
Every small town has at least one house the children whisper about; the type of house that has always been abandoned; where the once pristine white paint has faded to a grimy gray; where the windows are boarded, and the lawn never grows; where childr...
It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip off down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost ...
I was living my own future and my brother's lost one as well. I represented him here just as he represented me there, in some unguessable other place. His move from life to death might resemble my stepping into the kitchen - into its soft nowhere qua...
When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the ...
Anyway, I'm in bed with her, her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on. Which, halfwa...
I had a dream about you. Too many people died that night to count. Still, I had to provide the Minister of Numbers with a rough estimate. The number I told him was two, and that number may be off by one or two people. In the dream, nobody could find ...
It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves in a thousand luminous hues. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes in...
I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy...
He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?" He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself som...
