The Hour Of The Star

The Hour Of The Star

Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I do not know why, but I do know that the...
Amaryllis Night and Day

Amaryllis Night and Day

Amaryllis seemed preoccupied. ‘See you in my dreams,’ I said. That got a smile, then she drank about half her whisky and began to cry into the rest of it. ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’ She wiped her eyes, blew her...
Sapiens

Sapiens

We can connect a limited number of sounds and signs to produce an infinite number of sentences, each with a distinct meaning. We can thereby ingest, store and communicate a prodigious amount of information about the surrounding world. A green monkey can yell to its...
The Surgeon Of Crowthorne

The Surgeon Of Crowthorne

Lambeth belonged administratively, at least until 1888, to the county of Surrey – meaning that the relatively strict laws that applied to the capital’s citizens did not apply to anyone who ventured, via one of the new bridges like Waterloo, Blackfriars, Westminster or Hungerford, into the wen of Lambeth. The village thus became fast known as a site of revelry and abandon, a place where public houses and brothels and lewd theatres abounded, and where a man could find entertainment of all kinds – and disease of all varieties – for no more than a handful of pennies.

Down Under: In A Sunburned Country

Down Under: In A Sunburned Country

…Cook was now free to go off and fulfill the second part of his assignment—to explore the lands of the South Seas and bring home anything that looked scientifically interesting. To this end, he had with him a brilliant and wealthy young botanist named Joseph...