If You Are Writing Any Book About

What Strange Places Our Lives Can Carry Us To, What Dark Passages.

This Ravishing World. This Achingly Bittersweet, Ravishing World.

My Rule Has Always Been, Write The Next Part Of The Book That You Seem To Know Well. So I Won't Necessarily Write Chapter Two After Chapter One.

Rust, Corrosion, Wind, Rain. The Nibbling Teeth Of Mice And The Acrid Droppings Of Insects And The Devouring Jaws Of Years. The Was Of Nature Upon Machines, Of The Planet's Chaotic Forces Upon The Works Of Humankind. The Energy That Man Had Pulled From The Earth Was Being Inexorably Pulled Back Into It, Sucked Like Water Down A Drain. Before Long, If It Hadn't Happened Already, Not A Single High-tension Pole Would Be Left Standing On The Earth. Mankind Had Built A World That Would Take A Hundred Years To Die. A Century For The Last Light To Go Out.

I Came To Houston For A Job, The Reason Most People Move Halfway Across The Country With A First Grader And A Five-week-old. I Came Here To Teach At Rice.