MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Category: FICTION IN PHASE SPACE

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • Rover

    The screen flickered again, its harsh blue glow casting jagged, angular shadows across the cockpit. Rover Unit R-VR07 adjusted his position within the cramped confines of the escape pod, his articulated limbs whirring softly against the silence. Somewhere deep within his titanium chassis, algorithms churned in quiet frustration. They found no solution. The barren rock…

  • 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…

  • The Black Hole

    I first noticed it on a Tuesday, which seemed appropriate for a sinkhole. It had appeared overnight in the center of Municipal Plaza, approximately where the statue of Founder Henderson used to stand,  who had apparently founded something at some point but the plaque had worn smooth decades ago. The sinkhole was modest. Perhaps three…

  • The Cagliostro Protocol

    Three data points from dead media. Cagliostro (1949), Orson Welles cranking out noir-gothic product for Italian producers from Alexandre Dumas. Dracula (1897), Bram Stoker manufacturing Victorian anxiety porn. The Magician (1908), Somerset Maugham debugging English imperial neurosis. Different decades, same protocol stack. The pattern: charismatic outsider penetrates failing system, exposes its vulnerabilities, triggers cascade failure,…

  • The Compromise

    Marcus adjusted his Hermès tie in the reflection of his office window, forty-seven floors above Manhattan. Below, protesters marched through sleet, their signs dissolving into papier-mâché resolve. He’d meant to join them. “I really was going to go,” he told his reflection. The reflection nodded. It always did. Instead, he turned to his computer and…

  • The Curator

    I was hired to soften things. Not to lie, Mr. Vilner explained during my interview—he was very clear about this—but to prepare people. To ensure that when the bad news arrived, it arrived gently, cushioned by context, wrapped in perspective, delivered with appropriate emotional scaffolling so that no one would be traumatized by suddenness. “We…

  • The Drift

    Long ago, on the shores of a storm-tossed sea, there lived two brothers: Li, the elder, steady as ancient stone, and Wei, the younger, restless as the gulls. Their father, Lao, a weathered fisherman, had taught them to read the tides, but the brothers’ hearts sailed different currents. Li anchored his small boat each dawn…