Plato's Comeuppanceby Raphael Carter
(Issue 9 ? posted May 30, 1997; archived June 13, 1997)Another age thought fossils clots of stone
Made molten by the lightning's violence
And shaped by some supposed immanence
Of order -- not the teeth and scattered bones
Of ancient creatures that rough death has thrown
Down deep to silted lakebeds, dark and dense,
Which pressed them into shaly permanence,
Preserving ancient ages for our own.
But ours is not a world where Order dwells
Within the rocks; death is recorded there:
Each stratum is a slaughterhouse. This tells
Of worlds run not with harmony and care,
But cold indifference, or at best sheer whim.
If there's a God and He did this ... fear Him.
Raphael Carter is the author of The Fortunate Fall, which Booklist describes as "one of the most brilliant SF debuts in years ... a mind-boggler that ranks with Gibson's Neuromancer and Stephenson's Snow Crash as one of the best novels about virtual reality." In addition to writing sonnets on science, Carter maintains The Darmok Dictionary and Separated At Verse, a literary trivia game.