This is a finely crafted document. I feel ashamed that in all its two hours until I read it, I was the only one to seem to remark...

This is something that fascinates me the way that my textbooks in elementary school were supposed to... but failed horribly to do. And this document furthermore surpasses them in quality. Were I a teacher, I would want to hand this out on xeroxes to a social sciences class on Western Civilizations. I have honestly learned something--something valuable about our history as a species--and that is something profound.

Thank you.
Thank you, Taral.

Thank you.

((PS/Note To Self. I'm making it a point to read the stories you post without exception from now on. I don't usually go for FA's literary content, but you've proved to me that reading is WELL worthwhile if it's coming from you. I'm sure I'm going to learn many things ^_^))

I'm very much flattered to be the exception (to the rule).

Like you I'm from Missouri. I won't usually waste my time on fan writing unless I've good reason to think it will replay the time spent. All too often it doesn't. I used to feel bad about it, but then I realized that I pick and choose the professional writing I read too. You won't catch me reading Alice Munroe or Issac Besingevich Singer! Maybe they're excellent writers, but until I think they have something to say that would interest me, I have stacks of things to read that I know I interest me. In the case of fan writing you don't even have an editor as filter to guarantee basic literacy.

Another reason not to feel bad. I know better than to write exclusively for FA. With the exception of purely journalistic remarks -- of the sort "I don't get enough faves, or Tegerio is my favourite artist on FA, or I broke my arm and can't draw" -- I always have an eye to publication in some other fan venue. Almost everything that's appeared in FA since I joined either appeared somewhere else before, or is going to appear somewhere else after, usually in SF fanzines.