mwm@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (Mike (I'll be mellow when I'm dead) Meyer) (05/28/85)
Gee, this looks like a nice time to try this, what with cover art and the following: In article <7418@ucbvax.ARPA> wildbill@ucbvax.UUCP (William J. Laubenheimer) writes: >> Our hero, after facing many problems and dangers, finally confronts >>the Ultimate Being whom he feels is the source of all these problems. The >>being is chortling about 'his toys', and at a distance we can see all the >>people in the world dancing on puppet strings which this being controls. >>Then, our hero notices something.... strings leading from this Ultimate >>Beings limbs upward into darkness. > >This sounds to me as though it might come from Alfred Bester's long >novelette, "Hell Is Forever". The segment's conclusion depicts a reasonable >facsimile to the scene which you have described. My copy of this story is >in the Bester collection, \\The Light Fantastic// (Berkley/Putnam, 1976). I haven't read HIF, but it sure sounds like the illustration is on page 79 of "Frank Kelly Freas, the Art of Science Fiction." It is credited as being for "The Long Way Home," by Anderson. My memory of "TLWH" indicates that this is false [my memory says TLWH is about a starship that gets stranded out in the Oort cloud, and the crew/passengers are walking to earth], but I could easily be mistaken. FKF is, of course, one of the best SF artists ever to have put pen to paper. He consistently captures the feel of a story in a way that is otherwise all to rare. I'd like to find out what he's up to these days. He occasionally appears in his old haunt (the cover of Analog), so I think he's still around. Anyone know for sure? <mike