"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity" - > Alex, In the literal sense, this is quite true: AI, as they call the above, has not even reached the level of the lowliest bug, except in playing chess--which perhaps says something about the strictly confined, rule- oriented world of chess. As to your long and delightfully detailed letter accompanying the above apercu, I'll answer in some detail below. I wanted to say right away, though, that I have just received extra copies of the Heyne edition of SYNERGY with my novella in it, and I'll be sending you the one with THE FINAL DREAM in it, which is the one I have collaboratively turned into a screenplay, in a matter of about one week--so don't go looking for it in Germany. It certainly is easy to get lost in EP studies, and I'm still caught in that vortex to some degree, and I would be totally immersed if I did not have a far more jealous voice within me demanding priority of attention. As to why I turned, in my fiction writing, to science fiction, you have only to read some of the greatest SF writers of all time to see SF's potential for mirroring the world as it is: Jonathan Swift, Karel Capek, Franz Kafka, H.G. Wells. (Asimov and other American SF writers had some influence over me only when I was a teenager, and I even grew ashamed of reading in the genre when I went to college and learned what "real" literature was, like James Joyce and Tolstoy, etc. But we are living in a science-fiction world right now, and I find that I can use some of its tropes and methods to best depict our world in both its humane and inhumane potentialities. You will see some of those literary possibilities in my novella, although I'm not sure how the translation has fared with the dream-puns that are central to the plot!) Either you didn't tell me, or I forgot, that you had studied Chinese! That's great stuff to carry in one's head!! If you have the _Agenda_ issue which contains my essay on the Dame Fortune ideogram in the late cantos, you might enjoy looking through it. It was entirely written in the fall of 1971 at Brunnenburg, on the terrace where the famous Gaudier dick-head of EP was sitting on an ancient tree-stump. By the way, I believe I reviewed Wilhelm's "Later Cantos" many years ago and found it rather superficial. I felt that my own critical concerns were far more probing and demanding, so perhaps I am unfair to Wilhelm. I forget exactly what I wrote you about those letters of EP to Boris, which are in the Berg Collection of the NY Public Library--but I wonder if anyone else besides me has used them since that time in the summer of 1971 when they had just been acquired and the librarian gave me written permission to read them. They cover the years 1954-56. Apparently, Boris needed some money so he sold them. Anyway, they are an important source for anyone studying Rock-Drill and Thrones, since EP discusses a lot of details of their composition in them, and he even asks Boris for Egyptian hieroglyphic equivalents of certain Chinese or Latin mottoes. I still have the notes I took from them. Though I subscribe faithfully to PAIDEUMA, I've done very little reading in them for twenty years, so I would not know if Boris's letters have been explored by anyone besides me. I did not even know, for example, about the Stoicheff and Taylor books you mentioned. As to whether you should write a full book or series of essays, doesn't the answer depend on whether the material demands the unification and interrelated development implied by a book? Only you, not Hesse, can answer that question. Thank you for picturing your Black Sea vacation setting so colorfully; lots better than a postcard! Enjoy the New Year! ==Dan Dan Pearlman Department of English University of Rhode Island Kingston, RI 02881 [Latest book: novel, BLACK FLAMES, White Pine Press, 1997] Tel.: (home) 401 453-3027 (office) 401 874-4659 Fax: 401 874-2580 Internet: [log in to unmask]