M-L-M Mayhem!

Several days ago, Iain Banks died.  Although he made his mark on literature with a variety of social realist and transgressive novels, he garnered something of a cult following with his foray into science-fiction that amounted to twelve books and a critical rebooting (along with novelists such as Alastair Reynolds) of the "space opera" genre.  More importantly, and the reason why I'm bothering to note his death on this blog, Banks was known for being a socialist  author and his science-fiction, more than his supposed "literary" fiction, was stamped with his politics. Iain Banks drinking, like so many socialist authors Having grown up reading science-fiction and fantasy, when I encountered Banks I was already a marxist.  There was always a part of me who felt that progressive politics and speculative fiction went hand-in-hand––I grew up reading the kind of science fiction and fantasy, after all, that was largely opposed to the tradition of Tolkien and Star

Those readers who know a little of my life beyond this blog are quite aware that, aside from writing and ranting about political theory, I have also wasted many an hour writing unpublished and unread novels.  So at the behest of my partner and some other comrades, I finally decided that, rather than continue to waste time with generic form rejection letters that usually tell me that my submitted manuscripts have not been read, I have decided to offer one of my shorter novels (more of a novella, really, because it's just barely over 130 pages) for free on this blog.  The point is to ask my readers what they think of my novel, whether or not it's worth publishing, and get at least someone (I'm aiming for maybe three people - yes my standards are that low!) to read my fiction. This novel, A Continent of History , is a noirish mix of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror (with obvious political under/overtones) and was initially written for a 3-Day Novel contest that I failed to win––an

The Culture Industry, which usually lacks significant imagination, is releasing, almost simultaneously, numerous alien visitation and invasion films.  I always wonder, whenever I see almost identical films released at the same time, what sort of ideologies or fears the mainstream film industry is expressing or promoting.  What sort of capitalist fears are we witnessing? First of all, and already in the theatres, there is Skyline : Reminds me of a better scripted, flashier, cooler version of the 1990s Independence Day .  Remember Independence Day ?  You know, the one that was named after the colonial holiday and cleverly short-handed as ID4  to remind people when to see the movie and celebrate their patriotism?  The one where Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, working under the direction of President Bill Pullman, saved America and therefore saved the world?  The one that reminded us of why we should always hate that which we cannot explain, always suspect aliens, and that in the fight

This is an excerpt from a piece of short fiction I'm trying to clean up for publication. Unfortunately it was already rejected once by Strange Horizons... I'm posting this small excerpt here so that friends and comrades can comment/critique and let me know if it's just worth abandoning altogether. [And the short story, for any interested parties, is itself an excerpt of an unpublished novel.] When I was thirteen my brother returned from the war. His body was intact but his mind was an amputated limb. He would stare at the wall for hours. Sometimes he would scream until he lost his voice. Other times he would hold conversations with the ghosts of dead comrades. And though his madness was occasionally punctuated by moments of lucidity, my parents committed him to the lunatic asylum. Since Koenag had lost the war the veterans were an embarrassment. The patriots saw them as Koenag’s failure to retain independence. Those who welcomed the invaders saw my brother and his

"There must be a human history… It will become a ghost-history, as all your species vanish and become impossible." -Mary Gentle, Ash: A Lost History - I want to imagine Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Lost History as the mythic Burgundy and mythic Carthage that, according to the novel, have been irrevocably lost––written over by our history and recalled only as rubble strewn throughout our past. The book within the book, the “Fraxinus” manuscript and the notes of its translator and editor, is described as being pulled from circulation, disappearing into myth like the lost history it was meant to excavate. Is it really strange, then, that Gentle’s award-winning Ash would vanish behind the wavefront of publication, following the fate of her novel’s subject matter? Ash appears in the late 1990s to much excitement and acclaim. Like the archaeological manifestation of Visigoth Carthage and its golems, Ash is a revelation. Over 1000 pages, a footnoted book within a book, a cunnin