SLPAD - 33 the need to step out

[Michael Bailey]

“Apprentices in all fields and times are restless to be journeymen.
By the time I wrote “The Secret Integration” I was embarked on this phase
of the business.”


              TSI is a lot different than the preceding ones, isn’t it?
Other than a little in GR towards the end where Lloyd Nipple makes an
appearance, there isn’t much kid action in the oeuvre without adults
around, explicitly mediating.

Of course, the big point & takeaway in TSI is how the kids’ microcosm is
subjugated to the adults.

But the most enjoyable part is how the kids think and act when they are
thinking & acting like they have agency.


_V._ came out in 1963. TSI appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1964.

 It does seem natural that the author would feel like inhabiting a larger
world, rather than restricting himself to first-hand experience. Using
characters & events like those in his own experience, grafted on to a
borrowed setting, is a sapient compromise.