Brian Aldiss

You are the struback.

Time for listening to the oracle is past; you’re beyond the stage for omens, you’re now headed in for the kill, yours or his; superstition has had its little day for today; from now on, only this windy nerve of yours, this shakey conglomeration of muscle entangled untraceably beneath the sweat-shiny carapice of skin, this bloody little urge to slay the dragon, is going to answer all your orisons.

Dropping the letter, she held her head in her hands, closing her eyes as in the curved bone of her skull she heard all her possible courses of action jar together, future lifelines that annihilated each other.

On his last mind into the Devonian, when this tragic illness was brewing, he had intercourse with a young woman called Ann.

Fifi could not understand what on earth he was talking about. Every since leaving Plymouth, she had been adrift, and that not entirely metaphorically. It was bad enough playing Pilgrim Mother to one of the Pilgrim Fathers, but she did not dig this New World at all. It was now beyond her comprehension to understand that the vast resources of modern technology were fouling up the whole time schedule of a planet.

You know, Joe, you are my first reader! A pity you don’t remember my book a little better!

Swimming strongly on my way back to what the sage called the remote future, my form began to flow and change according to time pressure. Sometimes my essence was like steam, sometimes like a mountain.

Thunder. Distant sound.

Questions posed shake universes like constructs , like universes, shake posed questions, sound distant thunder.

Zero pollution, maximum ozone shield: Something tells me we’re not in New Los Angeles any more.