The World (Philip K) Dick Made

Philip K Dick is dead, alas, so it is possible that the world we live in is not his dream. Then again I have read Ubik. And also, it would be impolite to cast PKD as the Demiurge. The again, Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn, but I have never associated PKD with HPL, so […]

The golden age of science fiction

Dear Reader, It has been a while between posts, and this is delayed news, but I have been busy moving house – you may have noticed the world had stopped, this was the reason. On the story front, and what other front is there here, my “The golden age of science fiction” has recently been […]

COLSON WHITEHEAD SAYS DO THE WORK

Uncle Heshie said his inventions came from seeing something in his mind’s eye and then delivering it to the world. That was art – manifesting your idea in the world, If it were enough to have the idea, all those white boys Zippo went to art school with – who talked and talked but never […]

Australia Day

FLAG DAY It was Flag Day so we wrapped ourselves in our flags and went to the pub. What a jape! What a crack-up! We were hilarious! Everybody else had the same idea, but. Those bastards. All the flags were the same because we are all Flaglanders. It would have been nice to wrap myself in […]

2025: New Year meditations, and recommendations

I am a sucker for anything decent post-apocalypsish and endish of the world, and this liminal time as we approach two-faced Janus, looking forwards and back, is as good a time (as good an excuse) to recommend entertainment in this line. I have just finished watching Earth Abides, based on the novel by George R […]

Not a Speck of Light

I first came across Laird Barron a dozen or so years ago when I was working my way through Ellen Datlow’s yearly horror collections. Since then he has become one of “my” authors, those whose next book I eagerly await. One of the best things that I ever read on Twitter was what I think […]

Grooming my Grandfather

This story of mine was based on many years of a very similar dream. I would visit my mother’s father as he sat on a chair on a concrete slab in the backyard of his home. It was a yard I knew well from my childhood. Though he was dead and would not speak, he […]

Blur

My story Blur falls into the category of “I really like this story that I wrote”*. Perhaps you might like it as well. It has moths, corporate nastiness, self-help, redemption, recovery, a lot of weirdness, bowel motions, and more moths. If you did not read it in the cooly-named anthology ProleSCARYet, perhaps you would like […]