Dear Locus Online,
OK, here’s the idea. The Left Behind series is about what happens after the Rapture, right, when all the righteous get taken up? And everyone who sticks around gets to have nifty adventures? Well, check this out. In my series, 10 volumes outlined already, all the righteous get taken up, and in their absence the rest of us enact fair tax laws, pass constitutional amendments guaranteeing the rights of women, gays and lesbians, and craft a sane, non-apocalyptic Middle East policy. Plus we get, like, all their cars and stuff. I call it the Left Alone series. I pitched it to Tyndale House, but Jeez Louise, I won’t repeat what they said, and them Christians.
James Morrow
Dear Locus Online,
Here’s a prophecy for you: No sequel.
The Mothman
Dear Locus Online,
You don't frighten us, you mainstream pig dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person! I blow my nose at your so-called “best sellers,” so-called “Oprah’s Book Club,” Mr. and Mrs. Cider House Motherless Shipping News of Brooklyn! We don't want to read you no more, you empty-headed, exhausted and backward-looking animal food trough wipers! Now go away, before we train on you our senses of wonder a second time.
Any Number of Fanboys
Dear Locus Online,
You seek a great fortune, and you will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek. But first you must travel a long and difficult road, a road fraught with peril. Mmm-hmm. You shall see things, wonderful to tell. You shall see a cow on the roof of a cottonhouse, and, oh, so many startlements. I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed you the Nebula Award for Best Script. But truly, if fate be in error in this wise, yea, then the safe money is on Buffy.
A Blind Seer
Dear Locus Online,
Greg Bear was right on the money in his Worldcon Guest of Honor speech, when he said Jerry Pournelle ended the Cold War by thinking up the Strategic Defense Initiative. Boy, was that a good one on us! The ethnic uprisings, the revolts in Eastern Europe, the breakaway Baltic republics, the collapsing economy, the Kremlin infighting, we could have thumbed our nose at all that, but when I found out the sf writers were on our tail, led by the guy who wrote The Mercenary, served as president of SFWA and — get this — had a Ph.D. in political science to boot, Raisa and I cashed out and hit the lecture circuit. I mean, what was the point? Frankly, given how handily your sf writers cleared up the Cold War, I’m stunned you guys haven’t handed them the whole just-and-sustainable-economy thing.
Mikhail Gorbachev
Guest-edited by Candy A. Dunn
