The Midwife Toad
The Case of the Midwife Toad, by Arthur Koestler, focuses on the dispute between the neo-Darwin clan and Lamarckian proponents of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The personal disputes that…
Short Story – Toy Lists
The short story “Toy Lists” is about an obsessive worker and his need to make a connection with another human in an anonymous and impermanent work environment. (Edits from the…
The Mundane
We have lost our sense of the mundane. That was one of the great things about Philip K. Dick. He didn’t make science fiction about the Space Prince or the…
A Legacy of Annihiliation
Palahniuk takes an expansive approach to the culling song in his book Lullaby. For those who have not read the book, it features a bedtime poem, the recitation of which…
Rekindling Bloodlust, Die Hard style
There is no cliché that is too cliché for Die Hard, but the film holds itself together quite nicely, right to the end, wrapped up as neat as a Christmas…
Snowmobiles of Doom
“Every generation wants to be the last.” That is one of the many mantras repeated throughout Lullaby (like Palahniuk’s own version of “so it goes”) – and that certainly feels…
Damn that Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk does things that should not work. There is a quality to his writing that is prima facie absurd. It shouldn’t work. Kurt Vonnegut was the same way. It…
The Screwfly and the Y
I recently read “The Screwfly Solution” by James Tiptree Jr., although I think it was published under a different psuedonym, Raccoona Sheldon, all pen names for the actual person Alice…
The Death of Skynet’s old, alcoholic uncle… or What will the aliens do?
Some channels quietly switched off their analog signals last month. Maybe one day we will be all digital – but it looks like we will have to wait a little…
Watchmen & the future of Highway Virus
The Highway Virus series is a bunch of stories about a future world devastated by a virus. About halfway through it, as I was trying to turn my rambling notes…