Vaughn's Vision Is Older, Wiser

One Of The Most Heartening Phenomena In Today's Britain Is The Great Diversity Of The Modern Nerd - The Nerd Is Out And Proud, And While She May Love 'buffy The Vampire Slayer' Merchandise More Than Is Strictly Warranted, She Is In Every Way To Be Cherished As An Exemplar Of Cosmopolitanism And Tolerance.

Death, The Real Simile For Disease - For When We Are Ill, Do We Not Always Feel Like We Are Dying, Even If It's Only A Little? - Remains, Despite Our Secularism, The Most Metaphoricised Phenomenon Of All.

What More Chilling Indictment Of The Modern World Is There Than This: That The Condition Of The Smartphone User Is That Of A Dumb Animal. Moooo!

The British And American Literary Worlds Operate In An Odd Kind Of Symbiosis: Our Critics Think Our Contemporary Novelists Are Not The Stuff Of Greatness Whereas Certain Contemporary Americans Indubitably Are. Their Critics Often Advance The Exact Opposite: British Fiction Is Cool, American Naff.

A Short Story Is A Shard, A Sliver, A Vignette. It's A Biopsy On The Human Condition But It Doesn't Have This Capacity To Think Autonomously For Itself.