AustLit

Dedication: For Gardner Dozois, who won't have to read it again.

Epigraph: Our society may itself have become biologically dysfunctional, and some forms of schizophrenic alienation from the alienation of society may have a sociobiological finction that we have not recognised. R. D. Laing The Politics of Experience.

Epigraph: The individuals that make up the crowd are called 'Screamers' of "Criers;' only when these afflicted people gather into groups of a certain number do they become telepathic and develop mass empathy or a collective consciousness. When not in a group, the individuals exhibit the various schizophrenic patterns of behavior. Alain R. Lucie. The Collective Reality.

Epigraph: Perhaps you are the seed crystal. Perhaps you are the focus around which the masses of the living and the dead will gather. And in that moment, the world will be drawn to you and changed forever. Le Symbole de Crieur (Annotated)