Danse Macabre

And the fallout of all this? When Ma

For an instant, his mouth hanging open, Jack stared at the table. Then he swung to Ma

Ma

Ma

They do, too. Mrs. Seeley, who believed her husband wasn't her husband, comes in to tell Miles that everything is fine now. Ditto the girls who were scared of their English instructor for awhile. And ditto Cousin Wilma, who calls up Miles to tell him how embarrassed she is at having caused such a fuss; of course Uncle Ira is Uncle Ira. And in every case, one other fact-a name-stands out: Ma

And one more thing. At Jack Belicec's insistence, Miles finally decides to call a friend in the Pentagon and spill the whole incredible story. About his long distance call to Washington, Miles tells us: It isn't easy explaining a long, complicated story over the telephone .... And we had bad luck with the co

Miles's conversation with his Army friend is the book's clearest delineation of the paranoid mind at work. Even when you know the whole story, you aren't allowed to communicate it to those in authority . . . and it's hard to think with that buzzing in your head!

Linked to this is the strong sense of xenophobia Fi

Unhh!"-of fright and animal disgust.

No friendly, stoned-out hippies holding up signs reading STOP AND BE FRIENDLY here; here we have Miles and Jack, mostly out of their minds, doing the funky chicken over these weird and insensate invaders from space. There is no discussion (vis-à-vis The Thing ) of what we could learn from these things to the benefit of modern science. There is no white flag here, no parley; Fi

The book which most closely resembles Fi

The two books are similar-strikingly so-in many ways. Heinlein's narrator begins by wondering aloud if "they" were truly intelligent. He ends after the menace has been defeated.

The narrator is one of those building and ma

But what exactly is the threat which the pods in Fi

From Jack Fi

Here's what Richard Gid Powers says in his introduction about Fi

When Miles begins to suspect that his neighbors are no longer real human beings and are no longer capable of sincere human feelings, he is encountering the begi

Miles Be