We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

On a fading summer evening, late in the last hours of his old life, Peter Jaxon-son of Demetrius and Prudence Jaxon, First Family; descendent of Terrence Jaxon, signatory of the One Law; great-great-nephew of the one known as Auntie, Last of the First; Peter of Souls, the Man of Days and the One Who Stood-took his position on the catwalk above Main Gate, waiting to kill his brother.

I was a 'Planet of the Apes'-obsessed kid.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

If asked to name the worst moment of his life, Michael Fisher wouldn't have hesitated to give his answer: it was when the lights went out.

She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy.