The Children of the Crèche

Author’s Notes

Once upon a time, there was a thing called gonzo journalism. It's not entirely dead — I still stumble across delightfully over-the-top pieces of supposed reportage that are really just an excuse for mouthing off in extravagantly purple prose — but I fear the glory days of gonzo are gone, gone, gonzo. Readers of "Crèche" have told me they're sure I'm imitating someone, but they can't tell who. Sigh.

(The answer is I'm not imitating anyone specifically; I'm simply having flashbacks to Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Harlan Ellison in Tick-Tock mode, and a whole bunch of other writers who fed my gonzo cravings in the late sixties/early seventies. Hee-whack indeed.)

By the way, this is my earliest story featuring a scalpel. Don't ask me why, but scalpels keep popping up all over my writing... scalpels and mutilating corpses. It's a good thing I despise Freudian psychology, or I'd be really, really worried.