Suddenly, the potential for fiction as a vital force in the world felt unlimited. It could be everything: the most effective mode of mind-to-mind communication ever devised, a powerful form of entertainment, in the highest sense of that word. I suppose part of me had been wondering if the short story was going to be enough—enough for my grandiose ambitions, enough to accommodate my (youthful) ideas about art (that it should speak to everybody, to the best part of everybody, and make life better).
