Asgard's Conquerors

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I sometimes have the disturbing impression that the universe is determined to force my life into the mould of an exemplary tale. I have done my best to resist, but I am beginning to believe that resistance is useless. I fear that fate has it in for me, and that destiny has me marked down for something big.

I will explain to you, if I may, how I arrived at this awful conclusion.

There is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse which implies that the worst fate which could possibly befall a man is to live in interesting times. I had always been aware of this saying, but had never considered its logical corollaries, the first of which must surely be that one is similarly cursed if one is drawn, moth-to-flame fashion, to interesting places. So I, as a young man, was lured by my good friend Mickey Finn to cross half the known universe to the artificial macroworld which Earthmen had learned to call Asgard: the home of the technocratic “gods.”

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