FSF, January-February 2010 Read Online Free PDF Page B

after three years due to an injury. She went on to live with Koontz and his wife Gerda for another nine years before succumbing to cancer.
    Any dog lover is going to appreciate Dean's memories of Trixie, though how many readers of this magazine will do so purely on the basis of its subject matter is up for conjecture since most people in the f/sf field appear to prefer cats. Perhaps it's because cats are completely content to spend long periods of time sleeping while you read or watch a movie—so long as you absently scratch it behind the ear, or let it sprawl out beside or on top of you while you're doing so. Dogs require a larger commitment of time.
    I'm generalizing, of course. I grew up in a rural setting where we always had cats and dogs, and we have one of each as I write this. My cat's content to spend hours sleeping on her bed on one of the bookcases in my office while I work. The dog would rather go for a walk or play, and gives me mournful looks when I can't do either.
    But I'm drifting away from the real reasons I want to talk about A Big Little Life in this column.
    For one thing, it's a wonderfully positive book, without being saccharine—something that's a bit of a rarity in this cynical age in which we find ourselves. And if you catch yourself groaning as you read that, well, point made (if not necessarily taken).
    But the reason A Big Little Life should be of particular interest is for the insight it gives into the mind and heart of one of the major writers of the f/sf field.
    Wait a minute, you might say. Isn't Koontz a horror writer?
    Well, he's written books that might be considered such, but he started in this field by writing sf, and most of his novels fit under the somewhat larger umbrella of speculative fiction. The stories take a simple scientific principle, something we might see in the newspaper, or it was given a passing reference on the evening news, which Koontz then spins out in the best tradition of “what if?"
    Even referring to his books as thrillers is somewhat of a misnomer since they tend to contain a lot of humor without sacrificing “the ticking clock” that a thriller requires.
    I like the mix, but having followed Koontz's work for a long time now, one of the things that's intrigued me in reading his more recent books is the spirituality that has come to underlie many of the stories in the past six or seven years. It has its basis in Christianity but bears little relation to the more strident elements that are usually presented to us by way of radio shows, TV evangelists, and the news whenever some particularly provocative quote can make a headline.
    The truth is that the followers of most religions go about the practice of their faith in a much less confrontational manner. It's the militant element that gets the press because they make better headlines. Unfortunately that leaves those of us on the outside with a distorted view of what it's actually about. And probably embarrasses the believers who follow their religion's actual tenets, rather than distortions pulled out of context from their holy texts.
    The spirituality that has begun to work its way into Koontz's books is of the quieter sort, embracing rather than judgmental. Koontz tells us in A Big Little Life that he had drifted away from the Church, but all it took was a single dog—which both science and the Church have decided doesn't have a soul—to remind him that there's more to the world than what can be seen and measured and catalogued.
    The whole trick to writing something that will be meaningful to your readers is to write about what's meaningful to you. Koontz has always done this, but much of what he's chosen to write about has been on the outside. Now he's looking inside—a parting gift from the remarkable dog who came into his life one fateful day in 1998—and his books are the richer and more resonant for doing so.
    I'm not saying A Big Little Life is a religious tract. First and foremost, it's a wonderful