The Engineer Reconditioned

ABOUT “TIGER TIGER”

Honest, I didn’t know of the Alfred Bester one of the same name until long after I’d written this (which is surprising with the amount of SF I’ve read), but then probably Mr Bester was not the first to snitch those two words as a title, and I certainly won’t be the last. In this story the tigers came first, then the title, and it being an ‘Owner’ story it seemed almost inevitable that I had to put in that line from the poem at the start. The Owner is like the Old Testament God, who is, I suppose, everyone’s expression of the ultimate power fantasy. And that’s his appeal. No matter how liberal or well-meaning any of us is, we want that power, though many of us would never admit that.