A strikingly different view of mankind, and a most unusual story for Gordy, the greatest discovery-delight I had in reading these pages. And I'm not sure I can explain why without creating the wrong impression.
You see, I have read a lot of slushpile -the technical term for unsolicited manuscripts, sent to magazines or writers' workshops by aspiring amateurs. And the theme of this story is a slushpile regular -second in popularity only to the one about the only two survivors of a planetary disaster who ground their lifeship safely on a habitable new planet and it turns out their names are Adam and Eve. For some reason beyond my grasping, God in His Downtown Providence ordained that everyone who ever tried to write, tried to write this story. They are, invariably, awful.
Well, everybody makes an ashtray their first week in shop class (and sometimes their last), and they always stink too. Here's the ashtray the shop teacher made.
How terrible (goes the ubiquitous theme) it must be to be a god ... and be cursed with empathy. It wouldn't be so bad if you could just hate the little buggers! But to be a god is, by definition, to be ...

lgli/Gordon R. Dickson - Of the People.pdf

zlib/Fiction/Short Stories/Gordon R. Dickson/Of the People_24131721.pdf

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2023-03-21