Category: Fiction
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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…
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Pinheads
Being the authentic proceedings of a theological disputation held in Rome, Anno Domini 1647, concerning the proper population of a pinhead, with sundry observations on angels, salvation, institutional safeguards, and the unfortunate tendency of the world to continue without waiting for a conclusion The Most Reverend Archbishop of Ferrara rose first. “Brethren, the question before…
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Polostan
I just finished reading Polostan by Neil Stephenson and I have the same feeling I always have with him. He is a great neo-Victorian. So there’s always the veneer of sci-fi and technology but it’s all seems to me like build on a 19th century Victorian novel or early 20th century Edwardian that has just…
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Revisiting Vietnam
Research Grant Proposal: Revisiting Vietnam: Exploring the Parapsychological Labyrinth of a Humphrey Triumph Over Nixon, Impeded by Kaleidoscopic Counterculture and Fellow Travelers in the Fog Authored by: Mortimer M. Muddle Sponsored by: Abstract: The specter of Vietnam looms large in the American psyche. This proposal seeks to revisit that pivotal moment in history, venturing into the…
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RONALD KNOX’S TEN COMMANDMENTS OF DETECTIVE FICTION
broadcaster, Charles Williams, Chinaman, crime, criminal, detective fiction, essayist, evil mastermind, John Buchan, mystery, priest, Ronald Knox, Stephen King, theologian, translator, Uncategorized, Watson Far out, man. So, this dude Ronald Knox, a priest with a taste for puzzles it seems, lays down these ten commandments for detective fiction back in the twenties. Like some paranoid manifesto crossed with a rulebook for a particularly baroque board game. We’re talking full-on labyrinthine here,…
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Stuck Inside a Bunker with the Tariff Blues Again
The stairs creaked beneath my boots as I descended into the bunker, a subterranean shrine to American paranoia. The air was thick with the scent of lard, motor oil, and the unmistakable tang of off-brand cola gone slightly flat. Somewhere in the dim recesses, a radio squawked out a tinny voice—half preacher, half doomsday salesman—preaching…
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The Benefactor
Ethan worked in machine learning and lived in a glass apartment overlooking the bay. He had money, stock options, and the peculiar unhappiness of a man who spent his days optimizing systems nobody loved. One evening a package arrived that he hadn’t ordered. Brown paper, no return address, his name and building written in a…