Mr. Murder

by Dean Koontz

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty, the rest of the crew, and their adventures in the far reaches of a universe that was, on film, stuffed with far more meaning and moments of sophomoric enlightenment than was the real universe of hard choices, ugly truths, and mindless cruelty.

This is a hard truth sometimes. We watch or read fiction and think of how enlightened it is but the ugly truth is not enlightenment especially as we are experiencing right now.

“Life is so damned disorderly, things just happen, and there doesn’t seem any point to so much of what we go through. Sometimes it seems the world’s a madhouse. Storytelling condenses life, gives it order. Stories have beginnings, middles, ends. And when a

story’s over, it meant something, by God, maybe not something complex, maybe what it had to say was simple, even naive, but there was meaning. And that gives us hope, it’s a medicine.” “The medicine of hope,” she said thoughtfully.

A cynical statement ending with hope, a Dean Koontz trademark.