Ancient Logic

I've never really cared about Luc Besson as a director. Not that I hate his work exactly, I just can't summon enough energy to care about it one way or another.  "Fifth Element" is the movie I remember the most distinctly, but as a friend reminded me last night as we waited for his latest film "Lucy" to start he's cranked an unbelievable number of movies in recent years - either as a director, writer, or producer. And I liked Fifth Element, even though the plot didn't always (or really, usually) make sense. Besson is just that kind of film-maker, knowing how to film a screen with enough mayhem, special effects, and sheer gonzo style that you might be able to forgive him. So, I wasn't exactly eager to watch this movie. The trailers looked interesting in a sort of second-tier action film sort of way, but that tag-line intoned by Morgan Freeman bugged the hell out of me. "Most humans only use 10% of their brains..." Really? How many...

Finishing a collection from Thomas Ligotti is a strange experience. Firstly, one isn't entirely certain what you have just read. Ligotti is known as a horror writer and an influence of Nic Pizzolatto, creator of True Detective. From those two facts you might imagine that Ligotti takes a bleak look at humanity and its role within the universe. In that respect you would be correct. You might also imagine that Ligotti's stories revolve around monsters, serial killers, and other standard motifs of pulp fiction. Here, you might be surprised. Ligotti's "Noctuary" begins with a very astute essay on the nature of 'weird fiction,' tracing its power to the observation that the victims of horror fiction tend to meet a 'tailored fate,' a coffin specifically measured and prepared for them. The succeeding stories each sketch a situation where a protagonist meets some 'weird fate.' At times this fate might be horrific, in that it inspires within ...

My story "Drop-ins" was published this week in the "Yesterday You Said Tomorrow" anthology released by Burnt Offerings Press. I'll include links to buying a copy if you are interested below but let me just say a quick word about this story. "Drop-ins" was originally conceived as the third chapter in a much larger work on time-travel. I got into my head the idea of non-paradoxical time-travel, the question of how could you have time-travel that didn't cause some kind of logic busting paradox. With Drop-ins that idea coalesced around the notion of time displacement. Basically, we are already time-travelers. Every day we travel exactly one day into the future. What if you could put the conscious mind to sleep for a period of time, say a year, or ten, or thirty and then wake it up inside your own body. While your primary self was asleep, your life would be carried by a "stand-in" personality, basically a dimmer, slightly less-than-versi...