It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?

The powerful have received their share of the world's attention even when their power has been shown as sheer evil. The victim's remain the faceless masses. Numbers. Mass graves. These monsters have fertilized our century with the mass graves of their victims and it is time that the powerless had names and faces -- and voices.

Merely to live without a pain Is little gladness, little gain, Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief-- The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf.

There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.

Stupidity has a price and it always gets paid.

But I think, and hope, that the novels can be understood and enjoyed as science fiction, on their own terms.

Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion