Category: FICTION IN PHASE SPACE
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Kishōtenketsu
Kishōtenketsu is a unique story structure commonly found in East Asian narratives, particularly in traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literature. It offers an alternative approach to storytelling that subverts the traditional Western concepts of conflict-driven plotlines and three-act structures. The term “Kishōtenketsu” consists of four Chinese characters, each representing a different narrative element: Kishōtenketsu showcases…
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Let’s democratize this *insert business by making it more expensive
Let’s slice through the status quo, man. Let’s take this business, this purveyor of pedestrian products or services, and inject it with a hyperdermic of exclusivity. We’ll jack the price to a level that would make a Rockefeller blink, a price that screams, “This ain’t for the Joneses, this is for the goddamn Vanderbilts!” Imagine,…
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Lu-Tze and the Tao of Non-Engagement
A Radical Simplicity Terry Pratchett’s Lu-Tze, the humble sweeper-monk, embodies a philosophy that transcends the binaries of control and chaos, order and entropy. His approach echoes the Taoist principle of wu wei—effortless action—where effectiveness arises not from force or rigid doctrine, but from alignment with the natural flow of things. In a world where systems…
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Mamet
Alright, listen up. You think this business, this whole damn racket, is some kind of free-for-all? Everyone gets a shot? Bull***t. This ain’t a goddamn playground. But here’s the thing, sunshine – a crowded market is a dead market. We don’t want everyone in the game, flinging elbows and driving down prices. We want scarcity.…
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Mont Blanc
The town had a port, or maybe a bus station, or maybe just a road that pretended to go somewhere important. The maps disagreed, and so did the people. Depending on who you asked, you were in coastal Colombia, or inland Gujarat, or a Caribbean island that had outlived its sugar. The buildings were sun-peeled…
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Moorcock
Moorcock’s multiverse is the first one that isn’t built like a strip mall of IP franchises. Before Marvel turned “infinite worlds” into an excuse to recycle plotlines forever, Moorcock treated parallel realities as a way to ask better questions. His multiverse isn’t rent-seeking; it’s curiosity-seeking. It doesn’t exist to justify more product—it exists to make…
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Motivation
Motivation in the realist novel tends to be, in Freudian language, “overdetermined”, that is to say, any given action is the product of several drives or conflicts derived from more than one level of the personality; whereas in folk-tale a single cause suffices
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Museum of Unseen Futures
Perhaps that is the final limit of visionaries: they do not conjure the future but instead craft its museum, arranging their dreams as exhibits for an audience yet to exist. Each boulevard, policy, or technology is less a step forward than a carefully placed relic, not built to withstand the future, but to be observed…
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Objective, Subjective and Asubjective
We crave order, a map of the buzzing confusion we call existence. So we dream up these categories: objective, subjective, asubjective. Objective? Pure, unadulterated fact, cold and hard like a chrome thermometer. But is this “temperature” just another code word slapped on the writhing mess of the real? Sure, the reading might be objective, a…
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Phillip K Dick
Ted Chiang makes a tidy distinction: fantasy is when the universe gives a damn—about you, your dreams, your bloodline. It breaks the rules just for you. Science fiction, on the other hand, doesn’t care. It’s rule-bound, mechanical, indifferent. Same physics for everyone. Philip K. Dick, though—he screws with the boundary. He takes some schlub in…