Brianna’s Reviews > Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories > Status Update

'I've never started from a message or a moral, have you?'
'No, never! You get interested in the situation.'
'The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.'

[Out of the Silent Planet] certainly is an attack, if not on scientists, yet on something which might be called 'scientism'...the belief that the supreme moral end is the perpetuation of our own species, and that this is to be pursued even if, in the process of being fitted for survival, our species has to be stripped of all those things for which we value it - of pity, of happiness, and of freedom.

Do not criticize what you have no taste for without great caution. And, above all, do not ever criticize what you simply can't stand. ... [I]f our real reaction to a book is 'Ugh! I just can't bear this sort of thing,' then I think we shall not be able to diagnose whatever real faults it has.

Wow. This first essay, 'On Stories,' couldn't have been more useful and eyeopening if it had actually been titled 'How to Write Just About Anything' or 'What Makes Good Stories Good and What Makes Poor Stories Stink to Hoch Himmel.' I look forward to reading the rest. Wish I'd opened up this collection much sooner!