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SILVER EDITION
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SILVER EDITION |
Science Fiction Is A One-Restaurant TownJuly 2, 2001
Dear Miss ***
Thank you very much for your card, conveying to me welcome and much appreciated birthday greetings, those on behalf of yourself and your friends. I very much enjoyed receiving your greetings, those of all of you, and thank you all very much for your thoughtfulness. As I do not have an E-Mail address, it would [be] difficult for me to respond individually, personally, to each of the wonderful people who contributed to your card. If it is convenient and possible, I would much appreciate it if you would post my appreciation and gratitude on your site, so that I could, if only in such an inadequate way, convey to them my appreciation, and my thanks for their thoughtfulness. I would like to thank them all. Your interest and support, and their interest and support, mean a great deal to me.
--Und wahrlich, lange muss als schweres Wetter am Berge h?ngen, wer einst das Licht der Zukunft z?nder soll!--
(Nietzsche)
Hopefully things will change in the future and we will all have a freer, more natural, more vital world.
Indeed, it would be wonderful if we could all kindle and rekindle again and again the Gorean flame, one of a thousand flames which would illuminate a healthier more worthy future. It should burn brightly, outdoors, in the wilds. Indoors, some folks may close their shutters against it, but it is there, there in the wilds to be seen, if ever the shutters are thrown back, the windows lifted, the doors opened. Fresh air has not yet been proven harmful to either people or literature. In fact, it may do them good.
At this time science fiction is a one-restaurant town. Hopefully we can change that. There are hungry people out there, insufficiently nourished on the political sawdust of sameness, on the ideological cardboard of conformity. The mind is starved for its protein. Let new beverages delight the imagination. Let the spirit of liberty thrive in a healthy, fearless, well-fed body, exercised and alive, with choices before it. Those who fear the free market will attempt to ensure that it is not free. They may succeed, but if they don't, then we are all the richer for it. So let there be a thousand restaurants in the town of science fiction, a thousand inns and hostels, a thousand camps! Let a thousand meats be prepared, a thousand breads be baked, a thousand fruits picked, a thousand delicious meals spread out for the delectation of the curious and hoping. Let there be a thousand places in science fiction where the hungry can feed. Let there be a thousand places in science fiction for tolerance, difference, truth and joy!
Again, thank you very much for your card, and your kind thoughts.
With best wishes,
John Norman
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