This bothered me for several days—indeed, it bothers me now, a year and a half after the event. I take life seriously wherever I encounter it. Yet such decisions are necessary all the time. Every time I eat, something is perishing. I don't eat meat, because I prefer not to take a life unnecessarily—but what of the plants I eat? This has been a lifelong concern of mine, and the guilt never quite fades. In order to live, I must kill other living things. I don't like it, and I suspect I shall never truly come to terms with it. Now take the concept of God. Mine differs from that of most of my readers, but for the sake of this discussion, let's assume that there is a God, and His (Her) nature is somewhere in the ballpark of that described in this novel. Every day, every hour, every minute, He must make decisions, choosing between lives, because of an overall picture that we mortals can hardly understand. How much pain must there be in every one of those decisions! He must not have it all His own way, any more than I as a novelist have my fiction all my own way. I joy and suffer as I deal with fictional characters, trying to put together a significant whole. How much worse it would be if they truly lived and the fates I decreed for them were real! Yet God must handle real lives.

I think I can understand how He, after centuries of such effort, reaping the praise of those whose only interest is to get ahead of their neighbors, and the condemnation of those whose selfish interest He declines to endorse—

while the world slowly deteriorates because of their ignorance and rapacity—might finally just tune out. What is the average prayer, other than an appeal for some unwarranted advantage? The engines quit on an airplane, and the passengers pray for deliverance, not because they are benefiting the cosmos, but simply because they don't want to die. They seldom express much genuine interest in doing His will, just their own. They continually put their own words in His mouth: God wants you to contribute to this church, God considers you a sinner if you don't do what I say. He might not want to destroy the world He had labored so imperfectly to perfect, but neither would He want to continue with a futile effort. I can see how He could get disgusted and conclude that it was best to simply let the world wend its way to Hell in its own fashion. I really couldn't blame Him. Could you?

But I see no salvation in tuning out the world. So, in the end, I do feel that reform is necessary, and this novel represents a suggestion of the kind of action required. I believe it bears consideration.

JeJune 17, 1988

Copyright © 1990 by Piers Anthony Jacob

ISBN: 0-380-75286-7

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