Toothsome quartz boiling
Brian W. Aldiss Dawdling over his second cup of coffee, he beganVanity Fair. Rather to his surprise, he found himself enjoying it The waitress returned with his card and a receipt for the meal. KARNDOLI YON TOR - Mystical state attained through inaction; feasting; a learned paper on the poetry of metal The series of weapons tests had fused the sand in layers, and the pseudo-geological strata condensed the brief epochs, microseconds in duration, of thermonuclear time. Typically the island inverted the geologists maxim. The key to the past lies in the present. Here, the key to the present lay in the future. This island was a fossil of time future, its bunkers and blockhouses illustrating the principle that the fossil record of life was one of armor and the exoskeleton. Traven knelt in the warm pool, and splashed his shirt and trousers. The reflection revealed the watery image of gaunt shoulders and bearded face. He had come to the island with no supplies other than a small bar of chocolate, assuming that in some way the island would provide its own sustenance. Perhaps, too, he had identified the need for food with a forward motion in time, and that with his return to the past, or at most into a zone of nontime, this need would be eliminated. The privations of the previous six months, during his journey across the Pacific, had already reduced his always thin body to that of a migrant beggar, held together by little more than the preoccupied gaze in his eye. Yet this emaciation, by stripping away the superfluities of the flesh, revealed an inner sinewy toughness, an economy and directness of movement. Precisely, the voice said. … Will let me know the number of the pattern, my wife was saying, following me down the hall toward our bedroom, and I can knit it myself if I get the blocking done.” I think she said blocking, anyway-whatever that means. And I nodded, unbuttoning my shirt as I walked; it had been hot out today, and I was eager to get out of my office clothes. I began thinking about a dark-green eight-thousand-dollar sports car Id seen during noon hour in that big showroom on Park Avenue. Whom shall I marry next? Ildefonsa asked herself. It looks like a slow night.” Senator Phil McGiverns abilities included cunning and a high survival factor. He lumbered to his feet. Walters! Take him! he snapped. “He’s a fake!” He bent over to snatch at a desk drawer. The Sibling (important, but not essential): . . .the kind of person who is hated on contact—a do-gooder, a good-in-schooler, a sweet, weak, kind bastard of a sibling. Within the plain black frame were two figures, one large, and, in front, a smaller. The outlines of the larger figure seemed initially luminous, hazy, then, even as he squinted, perplexed and uneasy, the lines seemed to crystallise, and suddenly a face took form, with eyes, a mouth, and arms. The arms were reaching out, enfolding the figure in front, a man wearing a medieval velvet robe and feathered beret. He has never really decided whether he is a mathematician, musician, or writer. On the record, writing has the edge: at twenty-six, he has published seven novels (the latest— The Einstein Intersection,Ace, 1967) and an eighth, Nova,is due out shortly from Doubleday. But he has also worked as a singer, guitarist, actor, producer for a recording studio, and— most recently — organised his own group. The Heavenly Breakfast (4voices, 3guitars, an incredible variety of flutes). When The Star-Pit was dramatised on radio station WBAI last winter, he wrote the script, read the narration, helped score the music, and played apprentice audio engineer. He also cooks, and occasionally paints. toothsome quartz boiling Ed froze, even though he knew he was perfectly concealed by the deep shadows of the high cliff behind him. She was still looking directly at him, and then, slowly her hand came up. She waved. Hes had time, said Ian, to be alone. And to look at that package of Brian’s.” Names, Kadar reflected bitterly. What did they mean? In mathematics, you called something a ring, a cycle, an ideal. What you named it was unimportant; all that mattered was its place in the structure—never things, but the relations among them; those were what counted. What was Pauls relation to the world, now and in the future? Maybe this sex ismy job. I know very little about Roger Zelazny, because he claims to get amnesia when asked to write about himself. Among the few things I do know are that he can fill a page with fine, funny copy describing a writer having amnesia when asked, etc.; that he fairly recently acquired a Masters degree at Columbia in some particularly esoteric field of literature; and that he is an (or perhaps the) outstanding example of the influx of literate young writers into the SF field during the last three or four years. Does all that matter? Hes good and gentle and. kind, where he came from or who his parents were doesn’t change that. A well-dressed man in dark blue, carrying an attaché case, stepped forward and set the case down on a table with a solidclunk that riveted attention..
