[George Simmers]

When future generations remember God , it will be for the astonishing inventiveness of his early work, which still continues to delight. During a short but intensely creative period at the start of his career, he showed a generosity of spirit that largely disappeared in later years, when he became increasingly reclusive and irascible. God did not suffer fools gladly, and his outbursts of wrath became legendary. Commentators disagree about whether he eventually relapsed into total silence, or was indeed responsible for the later works presented in his name by supposed intermediaries; according to these he had moved on from those early astounding three-dimensional creations to the production of text-based pieces, typically dogmatic, self-contradictory and disturbingly misogynistic. Yet we should not allow distaste for these (possibly spurious) later productions to prevent us from admiring God’s varied and enchanting early works, which include the Crab Nebula, the anemone and the mongoose.