This novel is an excellent example of magic being incorporated into a modern setting so convincingly that you find yourself half believing it.

In the Las Vegas area, a game of power is played out over the course of decades by a small number of people who can use magic. (Magic affects everyone, it is implied, but very few people are aware of this.) The magical system, based on the Tarot, is heavily Jungian; it is powered by archetypes of the conscious and unconscious human mind. The story involves figures like The Fisher King and The Fool, as well as greater powers like Artemis/Diana, Dionysus, and Death.

Those who understand the ways that these archetypes are linked to the human soul can use them to their advantage… but this often – or always? – requires some sort of sacrifice or trade-off. The girls who are trying to assume the role of Artemis cannot ever touch meat or alcohol – literally never; one time in their life and they’re permanently ruined for the goddess role! The man who (unwittingly) plays the role of the Fisher King can’t touch alcohol without it slowly killing him, etc. This is because they are in opposition to the god Dionysus, the god of wine.

As often occurs in this subgenre, the magic is presented subtly at first. In the opening pages, we’re not even sure if the magic is real or if the man who is trying to use it is insane. Later it is presented as if it’s merely magic in the psychological sense of allowing you to influence other people. Soon enough, though, it becomes clear that the magic is quite literal, e.g. the main villain can kill people and take over their bodies; he inhabits them.

In one astounding sequence of scenes the hero, Scott, gives in to his craving for alcohol. The spirit of alcohol, Dionysus, appears to Scott in the form of the ghost of his late wife, and Scott’s plunge back into drunkenness manifests in his mind as a sexual orgy with her. At some level he knows this, knows that what seems to him like wild sex with his wife on the hotel’s sweat-drenched sheets is really him drinking himself well-nigh into a coma. But the illusion seems real, and Scott doesn’t much care. When it’s over and he has started to recover, he thinks, If that was sex, I am ready to gladly embrace Death.

Incidentally, this scene is an excellent example of a literal event and its metaphorical meaning blending perfectly. An addictive drug as seduction could hardly be portrayed more vividly. And of course, as with all good metaphors, the metaphorical reading is optional; the scene functions perfectly well as a literal manifestation of Dionysus using magical illusion to attack one of his enemies.

(This example also gives the lie to those who claim to find no value in the fantasy genre. Addiction as a psychological attack could not be presented so forcefully without magic, because we need Dionysus as a literal enemy to make this scene possible at the literal level. And of course, it can’t function metaphorically if it doesn’t function literally. I rarely bother arguing with idiots who disdain fantasy – a certain level of idiocy deters one from bothering – but sometimes it’s irresistible. While I’m on the subject: In the Harry Potter series, Hermione Granger has to protect her family from her enemies, who might strike at her family in order to strike at her. To protect them she must erase all knowledge of her from their minds, so that even mind-reading enemies cannot link them to her. She uses a magical spell to permanently delete herself from her parents’ memories, and never sees them again. Such an emotionally wrenching scene would be impossible without that magical spell.)

Scott and his wife’s ghost, or rather the illusion of his wife’s ghost, then drive out into the desert (for reasons I’ve forgotten). As they’re tooling along, Scott opens a bottle of wine and says to her, “Would you like some of this?”

“I am it, darling,” she replies.

After they’ve reached their destination and are searching an abandoned building in the desert, the image of his wife begins to decay. Soon enough, it is apparent what it really is for Scott. He looks at the crouching skeleton, decorated with a few scraps of hanging flesh and surmounted by a malevolently grinning skull, and realizes, This was indifferent Death. This was nobody’s ally.

In terms of the plotting, I have only one objection (SPOILER WARNING): Scott has lost his eye and his father knows it. So his father doesn’t recognize him when he shows up again in the 1969 Assumption game? It doesn’t even occur to him that the guy with one eye might be his son? Come on, Powers! This could have been dealt with somehow, e.g., Scott is self-conscious about his eye, so he wears shades. People have been known to do this in card games! The same objection applies to the second set of Assumption games that are played circa 1990. Seriously, another player with one eye? His father doesn’t notice or get suspicious? Aargh!

But overall, this is a very good novel indeed. I cannot recall ever having read anything quite like it. I suppose some of Stephen King’s fiction from the 1970s and 1980s has a similar combination of narrative propulsion and magical peril, e.g. The Stand.

Powers wrote two sequels to Last Call, but this novel is so good that one fears a sequel might be a let-down. I intend to re-read it before I take a shot at a sequel, so that before I have to absorb more material, I can re-absorb the pleasures of this ka-pow of a book at a leisurely pace, instead of the furious pace at which I first read it.

The movie Die Hard was very loosely based on this. The novel is much darker than the movie. The novel manages to be both didactic and cynically amoral; there are no good guys in it. The Marxist terrorists are just Marxist terrorists; they’re not glamorized at all. But at the same time, the corporation whose building they take over is also portrayed as a bad guy, looting the third world and engaging in arms dealing to fascists, etc. It’s weird. There’s a hint of “capitalists are evil and corrupt and deserve everything bad that happens to them,” but it is also made plain that the Marxists are nothing but killers who enjoy killing, and that when people like them obtain power, the next thing that happens is massacres and genocide. This is stated explicitly. Therefore, Thorp really does not seem to be taking anyone’s side. Also, instead of the cop’s ex-wife in the building, it’s his daughter, and she dies at the end, plunging to her death along with the head of the terrorist gang. Gah, why? Is there a message there? Or is it just a tragedy? It’s hard to tell what Thorp intended.

I think Hollywood made the right call when they transferred this to the screen. They removed the cynicism and political aspects (is nihilism political?) and turned it into a battle against a group of common thieves. In other words, they turned it into a good action movie.

Pacing and structure: The beginning is horribly slow. Nothing interesting happens until page 40, which is when our hero first hears screams from elsewhere in the building. Before that, it’s just a bunch of largely purposeless ruminations about his professional and personal past. It tells us the hero is familiar with anti-terrorism methods, but that could have been handled in less than a page. PAAAADDING! I admit it; skipped ahead. The Los Angeles Times called the novel, “A ferocious, bloody, raging book so single-mindedly brilliant in concept and execution it should be read at a single sitting.” Well… once it gets going, sure. In fact, I did read it in one day. But the beginning suggests that the first draft wasn’t long enough and Thorp had to pad it out.

I’m not sure who the target audience for this novel would be now. Even if you like the movie, that’s not a good reason to read the novel because the movie is significantly better. I think perhaps the best candidate for this is an aspiring Tinseltown screenwriter who would like an example of how to take literary source material and turn it into a movie. Unlike many other cases that come to mind (cough, The Hobbit cough), Hollywood’s choices in conversion here were spot-on.

I briefly weighed in on a discussion of the “show don’t tell” rule on LibraryThing recently and I want to expand on my point.

The benefits of the “show don’t tell” rule are clearly seen for characterization. You don’t say, “Bob was insane and evil.” Rather, you show the reader Bob going around trying to get his co-workers fired if they wear belts that don’t match their shoes, or whatever. That way the reader hasn’t just been told a rumor about Bob, as it were; the reader sees Bob’s behavior and draws his/her own conclusions.

Even here, though, this is just a rule of thumb, not a law of physics. There actually are contexts where you should say “Bob was insane and evil,” e.g., you’re at a moment where it helps the reader to be told that, but you can’t afford to slow the pacing with details (and Bob is offstage), etc. Note if that character appears later, you should follow up and show detail supporting the original “told” part.

The “tell” as such isn’t necessarily bad technique; rather, the “tell” without the supporting “showing” of the particulars (at least eventually) is bad technique.

However, if your specific instance is very clear, you can eliminate the tell part entirely. E.g., if Bob tries to get his clothing-mismatched colleagues fired, we don’t need to be told that he’s evil. But even with a more subtle character who’s torn in conflicting directions about something, you generally don’t need to say “he felt conflicted.” Take a man who wants to be both an actor and a rock star. If you clearly show him wrestling with this, you simply don’t need to say “he was wrestling with (etc.)” Indeed, it would be ridiculous to bother including it.

In physical description, e.g., of a person, a little tell mixed in with a lot of show can go a long way. Examples below.

Ayn Rand understood all this: The author provides both abstract summaries/evaluations of the sense of an event (or description, e.g., of a person or scene), and also the supporting particulars that justify the abstract evaluation.

Let me offer an example:

She was very ugly. Her eyes were so pale they seemed colorless. Her mouth was soft, puffy and more or less formless; it suggested weakness, as though unwilling to commit to any particular shape. Her hair was a nondescript light brown, the color of dishwater.

The particulars (the details of the face) “prove” the evaluation (she was ugly), and the evaluation gives meaning to the particulars; it unifies, explains them, and tells the reader why the author chose to include those details.

The particulars support the generality; the generality gives meaning and purpose to the particulars.

Such is the writer’s power over the facts presented, and the evaluation attached to them, that a few small changes in what is expressed and how it is expressed can support an entirely different judgment. For example:

She was very beautiful. Her eyes were pale; they seemed ethereal, angelic. Her mouth was soft, suggesting it was waiting to yield to a man’s kiss. Her hair, a muted sienna, allowed her face to hold all of one’s attention. The overall effect was strikingly sensual.

Notice the “objective facts” about the woman’s appearance are almost exactly the same in these two passages. Changes that are seemingly “only” a matter of nuance make them very different in terms of the overall impression. But it is not only a difference of “marketing”; I also did some fine brushwork with the objective details. For example, in the first passage her mouth is shapeless. In the second passage, it isn’t; it is soft, as if she has an inner eroticism that is, consciously or unconsciously, making her hold her lips (an important erogenous zone) in a sexual way. In other words, in the second passage there is a suggestion of intent in the shape of the girl’s mouth that is not there in the first passage. In the first passage, she’s simply a brain-dead idiot with a flabby mouth. In the second, the suggestion of purpose actually conveys the opposite impression: life, vitality, sexual energy.

This is what you can do when you think about what you’re doing.

By the way, the foregoing examples illustrate the fact that Art (yes, I capitalized Art) is largely a left-brain activity. You have to be consciously aware of what you’re doing. (I am going to write an essay on this at some point in the future, but it will be longer than a blog post.) Rand: “A beard and a vacant stare are not the defining characteristics of an artist.” (Heh.) While instinct certainly has its place in Art, to use it in a good way, you must know what you’re doing. If you’re an aspiring artist and someone tells you that you should usually go by your inscrutable instinct, run away from that person as fast as you can. Whether they know it or not, their advice will screw up your ability to create.

Above I said, “Note if that character appears later, you should follow up and show detail supporting the original ‘told’ part.” Indeed, setting the stage with a little bit of tell can leverage the show later. E.g., if it’s a fantasy novel and a character off stage has been set up as a Witch Queen who is responsible for maintaining sexual desire in the world, then when you finally show her to the reader, the show parts will have more impact. From one of the last chapters in my novel The War of the First Day:

We all turned. A woman sat on one of the rocks. She wore a hunter green silk garment that draped her with careless flair; it flowed around her baring just enough skin to tease the eye without satisfying it. Her crossed legs slanted provocatively from the folds of cloth and she held a pair of green gloves in one hand. She sat still, as if she had frozen immediately after removing the gloves, projecting an air of casual dominance. She had long brown hair, gray eyes, and perfect skin with a hint of an olive tan, and she was beautiful to the point of it seeming rude. Her face, intrusively, seemed to take over the glade because the eye didn’t want to look at anything else. Lesser women—all of us—felt ourselves turning invisible. This was, of course, Aventa Vulpa, the Queen of Lust.

She gave me a smile that would have made a man’s brain drop out through his anus and said, “So you’re the girl who [spoiler elided].”

To summarize, the rule “Show don’t tell” should be thought of as a general rule, a rule of thumb. Here is something much closer to an unbreakable rule, a meta-rule:

For any given rule of writing fiction, you should either:

(1) Follow the rule,

or,

(2) Break the rule for specific reason that you can articulate to yourself. This is basically just saying that you know what you’re doing.

Even this meta-rule isn’t always right, because sometimes you just have to follow your gut.

Advice for writers: It’s an oft-heard lament that sometimes it’s annoying to cut material from your manuscript. For example, it might be a scene that works well as a stand-alone scene. Or you just might be genuinely unsure, as an artist, whether a certain passage should be in the novel (or short story, whatever). To eliminate your reluctance to make cuts, create an archive file where you save the cut material, with a note on where the stricken material was in the draft. That lets you take an axe to your manuscript without hesitation, because you know you can always re-incorporate the stricken material later if you change your mind. I find that I rarely change my mind, but it really helps to make the cut in the first place.

Red Queen, kick-ass cover:

I know nothing about this book, but the cover is excellent. And it goes so very well with the title. You just know that whoever this red queen is, she’s nasty.

From-the-hip overview: This novel is a like a combination of Lev Grossman’s Magicians series and Max Barry’s Lexicon. In particular, some similarities to The Magicians lie in the speculations about what magic might be like if young people in the real world had it. (Grossman and Hawkins have very different takes on this, though.) A major similarity to Lexicon is the bad-ass female character who does things that are mysterious at first, but are explained gradually, with a nonlinear narrative structure.

Story summary: Twelve children are orphaned when a catastrophe destroys the subdivision in which they live. They are adopted by a man called “Father,” who is an extremely powerful magician. In fact, he may or may not be God.

Father’s house is a vast library of magical knowledge, and he forces the children to become his apprentices. Each child specializes in a particular branch of knowledge. Some of these specialties, e.g. languages, seem prosaic, and others, like traveling in the land of the dead, not so prosaic. But even the prosaic-seeming specialties really aren’t; for example, the viewpoint character, Carolyn, is assigned the specialty of languages, and she has to learn literally every language ever spoken by humans or anything else. Father does things to her memory to make this possible, and does things to time, so she can learn them all before she’s 50 gazillion years old. She also knows the languages of animals, storm clouds, and volcanos. There is a specific reason that Father assigns Carolyn this specialty, which is revealed, very nonchalantly, toward the end of the novel.

Another specialty is war, and this is where the overt conflict in the novel comes from. The child David is assigned war, and Father gives him, as with all the other children, various abilities appropriate for his specialty. In particular, David can read people’s minds to an extent, especially in the heat of battle, which makes it very difficult to surprise him. Not surprisingly, since he’s essentially a god of war, he is horrifically cruel, not to mention murderous, and so he is novel’s main antagonist.

Or is he?

For a while we’re kept guessing about this, as Carolyn’s ruminations are largely withheld from us, the readers. This is particularly appropriate given an antagonist who can read minds, because there are certain things which she can hardly allow herself to think, so of course we can’t see her thinking them.

Due to the masking of Carolyn’s thoughts and the non-linear narrative, Carolyn’s motives and character are revealed gradually and sometimes jarringly. (When I say jarringly, I don’t mean that Hawkins handles characterization poorly; it’s plain that he does this intentionally.) We are constantly changing our mind about Carolyn. First she seems like a good guy, then a bad guy, then a good… until we finally understand what she was trying to accomplish and the constraints she was operating within.

Apparently some readers had trouble with the non-linear structure, but this reader had no difficulty. In fact, the non-linear structure is simply the use of flashbacks, helpfully identified with the chapter tag “Interlude.”

Speaking of structure, though, there was an aspect that was a little bit Say what?: When the main conflict is resolved there are still 95 pages left. There follows what struck me as an extended coda. There is a point to it, it turns out, which has to do with the internal conflict, as opposed to the external conflict. But the managing of this, structurally, could have been done in a better way.

The book also has a lot of horrific violence, to the point that some have labeled it Horror, as opposed to Fantasy. To quote Louis XIV in Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, “Persons of a sensitive disposition will avert their eyes.” The horrible things people do to each other! That alone keeps it from being a five out of five, for me. It is simply too much. Don’t get me wrong; this is a good novel. But, for example, the tortures, er, punishments, that “Father” inflicts on his adopted children/students are almost unbearable to read.

Overall assessment: This is certainly above-average modern fantasy. But don’t read it if you can’t stomach extreme violence. The two specific examples mentioned below aren’t even a tenth of it.

SPOILERS FOLLOW. Read no further if you don’t want certain surprises given away:

● Another similarity to Grossman’s The Magicians: The same fight that happens over and over again, as the magician guiding everything seeks to engineer a timeline in which the outcome is satisfactory.

● Other similarities to Barry’s Lexicon: The main female protagonist is supported by a secondary male protagonist who doesn’t understand what’s going on, but whose involvement is crucial in the long run. In both novels the initial ignorance of the male protagonist makes him a bewildered secondary viewpoint character, and the non-linear narrative keeps us bewildered right along with him at first. In both works, the language skills of the female protagonist are crucial.

● What do I mean when I say that the violence is horrific? Well, for example, Father has a grill that is a bronze bull large enough to hold a large mass of meat for cooking. Guess what he does when one of his children is disobedient? Yes, he does. He actually puts David inside it, and cooks him until he’s dead. He can resurrect people from the dead, so this is not permanent, but that’s not the point. How could Hawkins bear to write such a scene?

And then there’s Margaret, whose specialty is traveling in the land of the dead. How does she become proficient at this? Father kills her and resurrects her, over and over again, for years. Each time he kills her it’s in a different way, so eventually Margaret has died in just about every way that it’s possible for a person to die. Not surprisingly, she quickly becomes insane.

● Is Father God? Ultimately this is left ambiguous, but… Near the end Father remarks that although he did not create the universe, he did add light to its physics. See Genesis 1:3.

● Why does Father assign Carolyn the language specialty? Because she is his designated successor, and the most powerful magic, the magic that lets one change the past, is written down in a book in which the words on the pages change languages every few seconds. Only a person who has mastered all languages could hope to make any sense of it.

The plot is unpredictable and satisfying, and a good reason to read this novel. But it’s not the main reason. The main reason is…

The people! God, the people! It’s not a nice group portrait, but it’s an amazing one.

Cynical, manipulative, ruthlessly, remorselessly dishonest.

Brigid O’Shaughnessy (if that’s her real name), who when one of her lies is uncovered, apologizes… and tells another one. When that one’s exposed, she apologizes and tells another. You never actually know if you get the truth from her.

Caspar Gutman, who considers letting Wilbur – “He’s like a son to me!” – hang for a murder because, well, I can get another son. WTF? I don’t think you’re clear on the concept of a son, dude.

The main character, Sam Spade, who sleeps with his partner’s wife (stay classy, Sam) and thinks of his partner as a sap. But when his partner is murdered, hunts down the killer, because

When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. … we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it.

The way people commit murder and arson, etc., just to get their hands on a valuable bauble. It’s just money, people. Sheesh.

The endless, endless layers of lies, from everyone, not just O’Shaughnessy, such that you never hear the truth at all, or if you do, you’re never sure because it might just be another lie. It ineluctably calls to mind the classic metaphor “hall of mirrors.”

The fact that (SPOILER) we never see the real Maltese Falcon, or even know if such a thing actually exists, or is just a myth, a mirage that this collection of liars, killers, and thieves is chasing.

An answer to the question “Is there honor among thieves?” Answer: No.

Another SPOILER warning. In the final scene the major (surviving) participants are sitting around in a room coldly discussing which of them the others will accuse of the unresolved murder, so the rest of them can walk free. Our “hero” is in on this; and though he’s not the killer, he obviously doesn’t care much whether the true killer is the one who goes up for murder. In the end, it’s the true killer who gets accused to satisfy the cops, but this is only because it’s the most convenient solution for everyone else, not because it’s true.

It’s a pit of vipers, among whom our hero is merely the least objectionable viper. Although he makes this intriguing statement: “Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy.” But of course we don’t know if we can trust this, either.

All this sounds like I’m coming away from the novel with a main reaction of moral disapproval. But that’s not the case. Hammett himself plainly doesn’t approve of most of this – except for the hero’s admirable ability to avoid being conned by professional con men and women – he merely shows it to us. And so the main reaction this reader has is not “That’s appalling!” – though it is appalling – but, “Wow, what an astounding portrait of a certain set of people!” They’re horrible people, yes, but they’re horridly fascinating horrible people.

UPDATE: I think I have finally figured out how to make the “Like” button work consistently, so if any of Em’s reader’s find their way here, you can now “Like” this post.

Em Lehrer is the author of a novel, a movie script, and several short stories. She is working on her novel Candy Wrappers, the first book in The Gravestone Chronicles. She has also has a fun blog that’s oriented toward writing. In particular, check out her fascinating author interviews section, but watch out for the addiction factor; I almost got sucked into archive-gorging there for hours. I recently had a chance to throw some interview questions at Em.

1. What writing habits are most effective for you?

Writing habits are tricky. When I get into it, I find myself writing for an hour or two every day, usually at the same time every day. Then, if I skip a day, I’m thrown off and I need to force myself back into the habit.

I always find that having a word count goal per day helps me keep on track. If I know how many words I want to get down in the document, then I have something to work towards, and I’m able to stay more focused in my hour or two of writing per day.

2. Do you have any advice about the craft of writing for writers or aspiring writers?

I think the most important advice is to remember your own voice. Every writer has a slightly different writing style, and that’s what makes them special. It’s okay if your writing doesn’t read like your favorite authors, that’s what makes it unique.

Another thing to remember is that no writing is perfect on the first try. Don’t get discouraged because your first draft isn’t perfect. Edit and rewrite and work on your manuscript until you think it is perfect. Then get an outside opinion or two. You learn through your mistakes, and every attempt at writing is another lessoned learned.

3. What’s a fact about you that your readers might be surprised to know?

This is a tricky question… I don’t think there is much about me that is surprising. The most interesting thing about me at the moment is where I live; which is in Dominica, a small island in the Caribbean. I’ve been here for four years and am moving back to the USA this fall for school.

4. Tell me about your current working novel, Candy Wrappers, the first book in The Gravestone Chronicles. What was the original idea behind it?

Candy Wrappers has been a work in progress for a long time. I originally had the idea back in sixth grade, when I drew a picture of a monster creeping out from under a cabinet and grabbing a candy wrapper from under a rug. The idea has much evolved since then and I started writing the actual manuscript in March.

The running idea is a girl (currently named Malia, but that may change) goes to her summer home after the murder of her parents to say her final goodbyes. While she is there she discovers that demons may actually exist, and they may be the real reason behind the death of her parents.

5. What do you primarily care about in your writing? E.g., story, good prose, characters…

Most of my stories start with a plot, which more often than not comes to me at some random time for no apparent reason. I do my best to develop the plot first, and the characters and setting etc. fall into place.

When I’m actually writing, I do my best to watch my writing. I tend to get very ‘heavy’ and do my best to keep my writing ‘light’ (if that makes any sense at all). Other than that I just let the words flow and fix up anything I don’t like in the editing.

6. What’s the best thing about writing/being a writer?

Probably the fact that I can create anything I want and bring it to life through words. I think that writing is like magic; absolutely anything is possible. That, to me, is amazing.

7. What reaction(s) do you hope your work inspires in your readers?

There is nothing in particular I try to instill in my readers. My main hope is that readers enjoy my writing, and are able to get lost in the world that I have created (in a good way of course).

Thanks for the interview, Em!

You can find Em at these other sites:

Her blog, Keystroke

On Twitter

On Facebook

Her podcast

Five stars from Marian Thorpe!
The War of the First Day, by Thomas Fleet: A Review

Some excerpts:

[A] rollicking, fast-paced adult fantasy novel… There are a lot of twists and turns…

[The heroine,] caught up in a complex web of betrayal… must embrace her own magical powers and make decisions to act independently, risking not only her own life but potentially much, much more.

This is a world of political rivalries, where characters jostle for power and will go to any length to obtain it: it just happens to be one where magic is the chief weapon in use.

The ending of the story, without giving it away, was… a surprise, and one that leaves the reader thinking.

The writing is highly competent, active narration occasionally interspersed with descriptions of precise beauty.

Roy Batty’s last words in Blade Runner:

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time…like tears in rain.

Time to die.

Here’s another passage, this one from Jorge Luis Borges, that genius who could evoke so much with so few words. This is an abridged version of his already brief piece The Witness:

In a stable that stands almost within the shadow of the new stone church, a man with gray eyes and a gray beard, lying amid the odors of the animals, humbly seeks death as one seeks for sleep… The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten. Church bells awaken him. By now the sound of the bells is familiar in England. But this man, as a child, saw the face of Woden, the holy dread and exultation, the rude wooden idol laden with Roman coins and heavy vestments, the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he will die, and in him will die, never to return, the last eye-witness of those pagan rites. The world will be a little poorer when this Saxon man is dead.

…Something, or an infinite number of things, dies in every death, unless the universe itself possesses a memory…

In the course of time there was a day that closed the last eyes to see Christ…

And at that moment, Christ ceased to be a tangible person in the minds of humanity and became a purely historical figure.

Compare Borges’s piece with Roy Batty’s last words.

(Essay question, 20 points.)

Extra credit: Just before his last words, Roy Batty is about to kill Deckard. Why do you think he changes his mind and pulls Deckard to safety?