Never Cry Wolf [antikvár]

Preface When i began writing this book eleven years ago the wolf was cast in a rather minor role. My original plan was to write a satire about quite a different beast— that peculiar mutation of the human species known as the Bureaucrat. I intended the woK to serve only as a foil for an exposition of homo bureaucratis-^that aberrant product of our times who, cocooned in convention, witlessly wedded to the picayune, obsessed with obscurantism, and foundering in footling facts, nevertheless considers himself the only legitimate possessor of revealed truth and, consequently, the self-appointed arbiter of human affairs. With malice aforethought, I deliberately set out to expose these new rulers of our world or, rather, to give them scope to expose themselves. But somewhere in the early part of the book I foimd myself losing interest in bureaucratic buffoonery. Without conscious volition I became increasingly engrossed with my secondary character, the wolf. Eventually the wolf took the book right out of my hands so that it became a plea for understanding, and preservation, of an extraordinarily highly evolved and attractive animal which was, and is, being harried into extinction by the miurderous enmity and proclivities of man. Never Cry Wolf was not kindly received by ordained authority. Because it is my practice never to allow facts to interfere with truth and because I