Re: F*i*F post for 11/03

Dave voiced concern that Faith in Fiction might become nothing more than an echo chamber where like-minded writers can find affirmation. Here's another analogy for in-bred exchanges: When you step between two mirrors, you see yourself reflected over and over again in an apparently infinite corridor. Cool illusion, but what does it do but give you, the viewer, a false sense of depth. Modify that illustration to a ruby cylinder with perfectly parallel ends coated to slightly different degrees of reflection. Introduce light into that cylinder and it bounces between the two ends until it escapes through one end as a coherent beam of light--a lazer beam. Depending upon the beam's characteristics, it can destroy or heal. What one commentator considers an echo-chamber, another might see as a lazer. Personally, I see F*i*F as a ruby cylinder with light bouncing madly between reflective ends. Will the resulting projection illuminate, or burn? Jim