Category: Fiction
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Identity
Identity is a complex and multifaceted concept that has been the subject of much philosophical debate. One of the most fundamental questions about identity is whether it is situated in time. In other words, do we have a single, unchanging identity that persists throughout our lives, or is our identity constantly changing and evolving? There…
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Ilium
So, having lurked around the crypto social protocol Farcaster, I’ve always found the name ironic. Years ago, I joked it was a real-world “Torment Nexus”—the classic tech blunder of building a dystopian thing from sci-fi because it sounded cool. They took the name from Dan Simmons’s Hyperion novels, where the Farcaster is literally the nexus…
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Iron Oregami
My govno of a name is Perce Vellum, and I was, until the Tuesday in question, what the firm liked to call a Redundancy Actuary, Grade Three, which is to say I was paid a very tolstoy salary to compute how cheaply other men’s salaries might be disappeared. A neat little irony there, O my…
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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