A Rage for Revenge

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I am going to break Rule Two.

Rule One is: Never bore the audience.

Rule Two: Never explain your work. Especially don't explain it, before.

I am now going to break Rule Two. Flagrantly.

This particular episode of The War Against The Chtorr includes a number of chapters of heavily didactic material. I am concerned that some of this material may need to be annotated. I would hope that I am wrong, but for reasons that should become abundantly clear long before you get to the end of the book, I choose to err on the side of caution.

This book is didactic. It needs to be didactic.

There is nothing inherently right or wrong in a book being didactic-although some critics and reviewers have taken the position that didacticism in a work of fiction is only slightly more offensive than spitting on the Madonna. The truth is that didacticism is only a description, not a judgment; it is not a quality that can be assigned rightness or wrongness. The use of the didactic technique, however, can be judged either clumsy or exquisite, and that is a judgment that is always appropriate for people who need to have opinions about other people's opinions. My dictionary defines "didactic" this way:

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