John Sladek’s hilarious SF satires may show a world riddled with shambolic flaws, but this (he pointed out) is actually the good news: My own small ray of hope concerns human frailty. All conspiracies, no matter how monstrous, are ultimately the work of mere imperfect people, whose irresolution or bad judgment or even bad conscience works against the system. They get bunions, their cars break down, their children run away -and all this grit gets into the smooth-running gears of their world domination plans. I hope.