Paingod and other Delusions

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The first edition of this book was dedicated to a friend of fourteen years’ brotherhood. He is now a friend of twenty-nine years’ shared joys and agonies. If anything, this rededication is even more appropriate, tagged as it is for

ROBERT SILVERBERG

One night, some years ago, maybe five or six, I woke up in the darkness and saw words burning bright-red on the ceiling of my bedroom.

ARE YOU AWARE OF HOW MUCH

PAIN THERE IS IN THE WORLD?

I crawled out of the rack and felt my way through the house to my office, sat down at the typewriter, put on the light and—still asleep—typed the words on paper. I went back to bed and forgot all about it. That night I had programmed my dreams for a Sergio Leone spaghetti western with score by Morricone. No cartoon, no short subjects.

The next morning, coffee cup in hand, I went to my typewriter and found the question waiting for me, all alone on a sheet of yellow foolscap. Rhetorical. Of course I knew how much pain there was in the world…is in the world.

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