He sighed. "So I'm expected to send my Fell Rangers to the mountains, raze the village, leave no stone upon a stone, enslave the women, and kill all the younglings to stop this dire prophecy from coming to pass."

[I]n the mid-1970s, one of contemporary English literature's soon-to-be foremost personalities spent his apprenticeship as the SF reviewer at one of Britain's most respected Sunday broadsheets.

Radioactive natterjacks, leap-frogging / from black hole to black hole;