LUDIC LOG

As one of the Great Men of History, I understand that biographies will -- indeed, must -- be written about me. And as a compassionate and helpful person, I understand that the many worthy (though, to be sure, lesser) souls who undertake such an enterprise will have their work cut out for them, and I want to help them as much as possible. However, I have neither the time nor the inclination to autobiograph; I therefore offer the following key "talking points" to aid the Herculean efforts of my future hagiographers.

1. I appreciate without condoning the reality that salacious bedroom gossip is what makes biographies sell, and I see no reason why this should change in the future. Considering that I will die shortly after my 131st birthday, there will understandably be no one then living who will have been blessed by an encounter with my prodigious and startling lovemaking skills. Therefore, I will say only this anent my sexual partners: they were numerous and satisfied.

2. It is true that the failure to attain the presidency and vice-presidency in 2008 of Michelle Fischer and myself, respectively, is one of my most profound professional failures. It is also true that I displayed what can only be termed great political naivety by underestimating the reaction voters would have to revelations in the press of our mutual history of drug abuse, perverse sexual practices and alleged "terrorist activities"; my so-called "What's It To You" speech to the League of Women Voters in September of that year does not stand as one of my proudest moments. However, it is categorically untrue that I ever called the reporter who broke the story a "dumb dick" or "the biggest sack of shit since Kissinger first ate Thai food". It is only too bad that he died from the brutal beating he received at the hands of unknown assailants following the election, thus denying me the opportunity to sue him for slander in claiming that I had had him followed and physically threatened him.

3. While I'm on the subject of outright fabrications concerning my life, I'd like to speak frankly about my role in the Proximan invasion of 2047. Without question, I was one of the first people to meet with the leaders of the alien force early on; and certainly, I spoke frankly with them, as straight shooting was my habit throughout my storied career. However, it is completely ridiculous to claim, as some have, that I told them to "go ahead, go nuts" with their plans for the invasion of Earth and the enslavement of its people. I am from the Earth and would never tell people to "reduce it to cinders, see if I care", because I would care. Since I am an atheist, it would be entirely out of character for me to encourage the enslavement of my fellow man "with my blessing". And I would certainly never say "do America first". As to the widely circulated video and audio "evidence" of me saying these very things, come on. Do you really think a technologically advanced people capable of piloting spacecraft with faster-than-light capacity, armed to the teeth with ion cannons such as the ones that unfortunately completely eradicated Jacobs Field, the headquarters of the Recording Industry Association of America, and the entire city of Indianapolis, Indiana couldn't fake a simple piece of video footage?

4. Naturally, any biography of me will focus heavily on my role as one of the great novelists of the 21st century. While I don't wish to be an armchair editor (or, more precisely, a graveyard editor), I would like to suggest certain choices when including critical evaluations of my work. For instance, in the New York Review of Books' critique of my first novel, the phrase "startlingly mature work" might well be included, with the coda "for a man of forty-seven" perhaps best left out. Any variation on "exactly what we've come to expect from Mr. Pierce" is fine, as long as you don't get much more in-depth. Karyl Honicutt's nice phrase "a rare author who rains glory on his medium" would be a great choice for the back cover text provided the follow-up line, "his medium, of course, being ridiculous, juvenile genre fiction" is not included. And reviews by employees of "Booklist" (who always had it in for me, for reasons I cannot fathom) should be left out altogether, as all 24 of them either contain the phrase "steaming turd" or incessant pleas for me never to write anything ever again as long as I live.

5. While I understand that my participation in early human cloning experiments are too important to be left out, can I ask that we go easy on the "blame game"? A clone is, technically speaking, nothing more than a twin, and one's twin is decidedly not one's self. If Johnny Winter had turned out to be a ravenous serial murderer who gnawed on bloody bones for sustenance, would you have blamed Edgar Winter? If Venus Williams had led a deranged army of beweaponed retards and genetic defectives into Europe, enslaving its people and leading them in a grim carnival of death, would you have blamed Serena Williams? If Patty Duke had been termed by busybodies "the greatest monster to bedevil mankind since April 30, 1945", would you blame that girl who looked just like Patty Duke on her TV show? I think not. Also, for identical reasons, I would prefer that any references to the robot double of me I had built be excluded.

That's all I can think of for now; I leave the rest in the slightly less capable hands of my peers-to-be. I thank you; my still-wealthy and heavily armed heirs thank you; and most of all, posterity thanks you.