Lament of the lamellibranch
I have been delayed yet again with the Octopus, this time because of an illness I didn’t know I had. I had been feeling unaccountably exhausted since last Thursday, unable to concentrate on anything productive at all; I put it down to an episode of depression. Wednesday morning I bundled myself up in bed under as many blankets as possible, and shivered miserably. About noon I broke into a ferocious sweat, and within ten minutes I felt perfectly fine (although hugely thirsty) and bounded out of bed. I made another half-stretch on the trail of the Octopus last night, but am not satisfied with it in some important respects.
While I was sick, I began going over the principal points of my long-deferred essai on the Fantasy Big Bang of 1977. I had already read (or watched) all the really seminal English-language fantasy works of that year, except for The Sword of Shannara. I have therefore been plodding through that distinctive if not distinguished work. It is actually a very good sort of book to read while one is sick and depressed, because it reconciles one to the brevity of life and makes death a happier prospect than it seemed before. In Heaven there are no such books, and in Hell all books will burn.
You may surmise from this that I shall have more to say on this subject later.
While I was sick, I began going over the principal points of my long-deferred essai on the Fantasy Big Bang of 1977. I had already read (or watched) all the really seminal English-language fantasy works of that year, except for The Sword of Shannara. I have therefore been plodding through that distinctive if not distinguished work. It is actually a very good sort of book to read while one is sick and depressed, because it reconciles one to the brevity of life and makes death a happier prospect than it seemed before. In Heaven there are no such books, and in Hell all books will burn.
You may surmise from this that I shall have more to say on this subject later.