As a kid I remember reading all the Narnia books (if those count). I read a lot back then - way more than now. All sorts of genres but certainly plenty of science fiction. I do recall reading Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen at a young age, and plenty of H.G. Wells. At some point I got hold of a large book containing four 'great' Science Fiction novels. I started with Clarke's 2001 and then moved on to Azimov's I Robot. Both fine novels, competently told. Same for The Day of the Triffids, which was the third worthy story in there. But then I finished with Silverberg's A Time of Changes and, for the first time, was excited by the prose itself and the exploration of human themes alongside technological ones. The opening paragraphs immediately gripped me (so, it can be like this?) and his work of that period has continued to influence my own style.
I am Kinnall Darival and I mean to tell you all about myself.
That statement is so strange to me that it screams in my eyes. I look at it on the page, and I recognize the hand as my own--narrow upright red letters on the coarse gray sheet--and I see my name, and I hear in my mind the echoes of the brain-impulse that hatched those words. I am Kinnall Darival and I mean to tell you all about myself. Incredible.
This is to be what the Earthman Schweiz would call an autobiography. Which means an account of one's self and deeds, written by one's self. It is not a literary form that we understand on our world--I must invent my own method of narrative, for I have no precedents to guide me. But this is as it should be. On this my planet I stand alone, now. In a sense, I have invented a new way of life; I can surely invent a new sort of literature. They have always told me I have a gift for words.
So I find myself in a clapboard shack in the Burnt Lowlands, writing obscenities as I wait for death, and praising myself for my literary gifts.
I am Kinnall Darival.
