Goat Notes

Jan 1st.  Tu.  Resolution Day.  New year, new beer.

Jan 2nd. W.  Absolution Day.  Consider the sloth, whatever.

Jan 3rd.  Th. 

When obliged to negotiate with King Kong, the most important constraint on one's freedom is not that his first name is King.

Jan 4th. F.  On this day a professional health scold shall perish from a vast excess of vinegar in their blood.

Red sky at night, call the Fire Brigade, already!

Jan 5th. Sa.  Twelfth Night.  On this day shall the Government impose an emergency ban on vinegar.

Something must be done.  This is something.  Therefore we must do this.  (Sir Humphrey Appleby.)

Jan 6th.  Su.  Epiphany/Ystwyll. 

A hunted fox or a Tesco wren/ Is no good game for maids nor men.

Jan 7th.  M.  Work is the curse of the drinking classes.  (Oscar Wilde.)

If I had a penny for every quote attributed to Oscar Wilde, people would say I was just as witty as he was.

"The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming."

Philip K Dick, 1980.

SF as the rightful literature not of "What if - ?" but "My God; what if - ?!" is a motto I would willingly blaze in forty-eight point letters of gold upon every ideas folder I ever keep.

And I wonder how much of the spirit of modern fantasy can be well understood in such terms - not so much of "My God; what if this should come?", but of "My God; what if this should have been?"

To get from the idea to a story worthy of it, we then mostly need a protagonist who can answer, "By God, then this...!"  - and to great triumph or tragedy, or occasionally even to great laughter, carry their answer and the reader all the way home.