Symbols and Signs
For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind. Desires he had none. Man-made objects were to him either hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant...
The Power Of Geography
The political union of 1707 had been preceded by a natural one over 400 million years earlier. England was attached to a small continent called Avalonia, drifting northwards across the ocean. At the same time, several thousand kilometres away, Scotland was heading...
There Are Little Kingdoms
It was deadening winter, one of those feeble afternoons with coal smoke for light, but I found myself in reliably cheerful form. I floated above it all, pleasantly distanced, though the streets were as dumb-witted as always that day, and the talkshops were a babble of...
The Nineties
The Nineties began on January 1 of 1990, except for the fact that of course they did not. Decades are about cultural perception, and culture can't read a clock. The 1950s started in the 1940s. The sixties began when John Kennedy demanded we go to the moon in '62 and...
Damned If I Do
The Fix Douglas Langley owned a little sandwich shop at the intersection of Fourteenth and T streets in the District. Beside his shop was a seldom-used alley and above his shop lived a man by the name of Sherman Olney, whom Douglas had seen beaten to near extinction...