"Promising the Moon in Hell" by Christopher Southgate
There must be a minor circle of hell, I think, where the occupants, free from boiling oil or sulphur, unprodded with pitchforks, distant from Satan's icy rage, are immersed instead in grant applications. Fifty copies must be sent. In each the applicant must promise that in the course of the project speeding locomotives will be overtaken, work of peerless genius brought to birth. The great and the good must appear as referees (not, in hell, such a problem to contact them). The perfect padded envelope must be found at the bottom of a vast basket of similar envelopes. No material of any human interest may be enclosed. At terminals and desk-top publishing packages they sit, their crime on earth too much unregenerate desire to set their mark upon the world as poets, scholars, persons of letters. And every form comes back the same: Application Excellent. Funding Denied. Fifty copies must be sent. In each the applicant must promise...