There's no such thing

"There's no such thing as the supernatural. Everything, by definition, is natural. But you have to find out what the rules are." That line from an old Vicki Greene novel had stuck with Shelby over the years....he had read all her books back in high-school and college days....the thought had struck him as reaching a kind of profundity, as he went on to the Graduate School of Analysis at Martian University. With PSATs like his, he had also been recruited by U.C.B. School of Law, and Harvard Divinity School....but Analysis was the buzz-word of his scholastic generation, and the best minds were working on Mars at the time. Of course Natural Humanism would become as much of a political movement as a philosophical posture, as the body politic got deeper and deeper into the issues raised by gene-splicing, cyborgism, alien melding, etc.... The military establishment had at first resisted the intrusion of Analytics into the traditional structure, but the proven advantages of the new approach could not be ignored, and soon a sort of secondary system of rank had to be employed, as every branch of commerce, government, and security operations came more and more to rely on the almost magical seeming prognostications of the clever Analysis School. But that brings us back to nothing being really magical, you just have to know the rules....you have to grasp the situation, and see what rules can be called into play. But calling an interspecies conference on a planet seething with imps, devils, Djinns, mages, burjas, and witch-doctors looked like it was going to stress Shelby's convictions. Oh well, we set the gunboat down at the Royal Spaceport, and then ride flying carpets to a castle in the sky.....and go first to a cocktail party reception with nasty looking steel clawed lizards, giant bugs, wispy ephemerals, sly fairie, and the odd troll and werewolf.....just keep in mind, Shelby told himself, it's all natural....