NatGeo-Gothic

From Gregory Marks: NatGeo explaining polar wander, thought to be accountable for the aridification of NE China ca. the Jurassic Era: Are we beholden to inorganic (te)cthonic deities?

Nocturne | abstract horror

The ceiling of the chapel house is adorned with a grid of gargoyles. In the floor beneath each sculpture they have put a photograph of it with an explanation. Winged lion for Mark the Evangelist. Two generic quadrupeds with human faces displaying their posteriors for Lust. And two winged monsters whose meaning is not known. … Continue reading Nocturne | abstract horror →

in Why Vandalism? 3 pieces of flash horror

One dressed up as ekphrastic essay: Notes on Glass Tears One subtle cross with fantasy: Empty Houses One fragment of militaristic dystopia: Sardine  Notes on Glass Tears 1. The print is of an eye; more precisely, the photograph of an eye. The eye presents in a state of abstract … Continue reading in Why Vandalism? 3 pieces of flash horror →

Social media is meant to scale down

From BBC Future: More and more people are preaching the gospel of small being better when it comes to online social life. Scale may be one of the issues with the massive social networking sites that now dominate our lives. And for certain Facebook users, the smaller and more secret the groups, the better. I … Continue reading Social media is meant to scale down →

The alchemist’s fever

Siniossoglou on Plethon[1]: More's Utopia was designed from the outset to stay in the sphere of ou-topos [no-place] and ou-chronos [no-time]. Plethon's utopia fervently[2] searches for locality and temporality [...] From a Christian and Stoic viewpoint [such insistence] confirms that by nature man is unable to find happiness in his Dasein and is attracted to what he does not or … Continue reading The alchemist’s fever →

The Zone after the rain

Nice bit of juxtaposition in my Saturday morning reading: it’s hard not to feel the Zone as a simulacrum for the internet itself in these late days of humanity: an increasingly cursed realm through which we willingly stalk, despite our certain knowledge of its very unreality. We know that, say, our Facebook friends are not … Continue reading The Zone after the rain →

You Can’t Love Your Systems Too Much

Systems are nice. In the beginning, they're just about as complex as two sticks strung together and stuck in the mud. Then you add logic (the code or story kind, it doesn't matter) until eventually the logic becomes functional, i.e. it depends on input, and there are your subsystems/subplots. Next up are flags to track … Continue reading You Can’t Love Your Systems Too Much →

When Are You Good To Go?

You mull over the notes -- you've been jotting them down for years. You fly through troves of PDFs in the interest of research. You've got characters, more or less, and themes, more so. Enough ideas to cut to fill a trilogy. Dreams are dangerous things. There comes a time when the research leaves you … Continue reading When Are You Good To Go? →

What To Write About When You Don’t Know What To Write About

I often find myself wanting to send out something to the world that I don't know what it is. A shiny little wisdom nugget, Eliott Pepper style, perhaps. The feeling is there, but not the content. I give it a couple minutes but it doesn't form, so I let it go. Then I think about … Continue reading What To Write About When You Don’t Know What To Write About →

in Modern Mythologies, a rant on 5G and the future of narrative

A bit past our cultural moment here, with some wild speculation that popped out when I finally sat down to wrap my head around 5G basics a few months back, when the topic was Late Night-hot. Published and edited by James Curcio, who has my humble thanks. Old SF would showcase “the terminal”, Dave speaking … Continue reading in Modern Mythologies, a rant on 5G and the future of narrative →