Most truly. For we each must have death come unto us in our time -- it is the law of the universe -- and what pain it is as we lie dying to know that others will survive after we depart! But if all are to meet their end at once, then there is no reason to feel the bite of envy, and we can go easily as equals to our common destruction.- Kesztrel Tsaye*
Between legs of granddaughter conveyance this evening, with a few moments to spare, we happened upon a very nice public library in one of our many local communities. While there, we were happy to discover that there is reciprocity among the library systems, and we could not only borrow their books, but also return them conveniently at our own local library.
This was a nice discovery, since a themed book of short stories had caught my eye. Some of my favorite authors - Neil Gaiman, George R. R.Martin, and Robert Silverberg - were listed on the cover.
The anthology kicks off with a deeply personal tribute to Jack Vance - upon whose work it is based - by Dean Koontz. It wasn't until I had read that, and was well into the first story, by the above-mentioned Mr. Silverberg, that the irony, vis-a-vis today's earlier post, struck me. The title of the collection is SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH.
My fervent hope is that I can finish all 669 pages before May 21st. Actually, it's due back on the 17th, but I don't suppose I need to worry about that.
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* From Robert Silverberg's Dying Earth story THE TRUE VINTAGE OF ERZUINE THALE
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2 comments:
We have one of those sharing-library things, too. But my local community eliminated the library from its budget (a wasteful expense, I suppose) so now I can't even get a library card. ha ha.
I used to read loads of science fiction when I was a teenager. I even managed to take what was basically the same "Science Fiction as Literature" course three times in college because the English Department kept giving the class a different course number. Nine easy credits, woo-hoo! And I loved me some Silverberg for a while. He had a bit of a kinky edge in some of his stories, IIRC. I attributed it to him being a sexually frustrated old man in has later career. I later moved on to authors who focused more on hard science than he did, especially Larry Niven. What I liked about SF back in the day, though, is that it was about IDEAS, grand concepts about the Universe, the nature of humanity, etc. SF did a lot to shape my outlook on life.
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