The Only Truly Alien Planet

Sooner Or Later, All Games Become Serious.

People Nowadays Like To Be Together Not In The Old-fashioned Way Of, Say, Mingling On The Piazza Of An Italian Renaissance City, But, Instead, Huddled Together In Traffic Jams, Bus Queues, On Escalators And So On. It's A New Kind Of Togetherness Which May Seem Totally Alien, But It's The Togetherness Of Modern Technology.

The Marriage Of Reason And Nightmare Which Has Dominated The 20th Century Has Given Birth To An Ever More Ambiguous World. Across The Communications Landscape Move The Specters Of Sinister Technologies And The Dreams That Money Can Buy. Thermonuclear Weapons Systems And Soft Drink Commercials Coexist In An Overlit Realm Ruled By Advertising And Pseudoevents, Science And Pornography. Over Our Lives Preside The Great Twin Leitmotifs Of The 20th Century-sex And Paranoia.

The Reptiles Had Taken Over The City. Once Again They Were The Dominant Form Of Life. Looking Up At The Ancient Impassive Faces, Kerans Could Understand The Curious Fear They Roused, Rekindling Archaic Memories Of The Terrifying Jungles Of The Paleocene, When The Reptiles Had Gone Down Before The Emergent Mammals, And Sense The Implacable Hatred One Zoological Class Feels Towards Another That Usurps It.

The Entertainment Medium Of Film Is Particularly Tuned To The Present Imaginations Of People At Large. A Lot Of Fiction Is Intensely Nostalgic.