Goblin Mercantile Exchange

kind of rooting for the animals

from Canoe and Camp Life in British Guyana, 1870s, by Charles Barrington Brown.

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…..

“To divorce fact from fantasy simply by labeling the one as ‘history’ or ‘medicine,’ and the other as ‘fiction’ is merely to create a new myth about ourselves. Life is inextricably linked with literature, and that is why there are no passports to a myth-free future.” -Gill Speak, “An Odd Kind of Melancholy: Reflections on […]

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Sometimes Alternate History writes itself

Well, not really, but you know what I mean. “There were other plots to rescue Napoleon from captivity including one from Texas, where exiled soldiers from the Grande Armée wanted a resurrection of the Napoleonic Empire in America. There was even a plan to rescue him with a primitive submarine.”

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Message from Walt

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The Stations now on Twitter

This should be an interesting experiment. I’ve just set up a Twitter feed for my 165 page speculative poem The Stations (which is free and available as a PDF download, and has a pretty open Creative Commons license). It’s entirely possible that the poem might make more “sense” being tweeted, in passages, than a straight […]

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The Ambitions

There is some good thinkings going on in these posts: The issue isn’t with revolution or change itself. But moving beyond the “single angry male revolutionist” or the “small cadre of brave revolutionists” model — to realize that the whole field is always changing and swirling, inevitably by itself — that the field is itself […]

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This is the frustration to guard against

“Those who treasure philosophical and literary works of a pessimistic, nihilistic, or defeatist nature as indispensable to their existence are hopelessly frustrated with living in a world on autopilot when they would like to switch it over to manual consciousness and nosedive humanity into a crash without survivors.” -Thomas Ligotti

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Twitter

So when I first started this blog more than 6 years ago, the idea of blogging seemed very strange, so I put the form through its paces with a kind of meta-blog sideshow with two fictional roomates, Evening and Quail. It was…rather strange. Oh, and there was an AI created from a VIC-20, I think […]

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House Speaker Seeks Independent Bookstore Bailout Bill

WASHINGTON–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for “emergency and limited financial assistance” for the battered U.S. independent bookstore industry today, and urged the outgoing Bush administration to join legislators in reaching a quick compromise. Five days after dismal financial reports from pretty much everyone, Pelosi backed legislation to make independent bookstores eligible for help under the […]

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12 hours

May we all exorcise the Plumberomicon and its eldritch bloviating tomorrow.

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The Palinomicon: Hockey Moms of Darfur

Spent. Almost devoid of speech. The “unbinding” itself must suffice. _______ HOCKEY MOMS OF DARFUR: THE UNBINDING Reaffirming, on the eve of Hockey Night in Darfur, the naming rights sold to the burning village Welcoming the janjaweed shooting free Slayer t-shirts into the crowd Commending genetically modified genocide Remaining deeply concerned by Canadian imperialism and […]

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another section from the Palinomicon

The transcriptions continue apace. I have hunkered down, tried to steel myself, but the deceptively simple revelations of this list still draw consternation. Have any of these namings been enacted? Meanwhile…I almsot hear the recitations of this wicked logos throughout the land now. The anger of the minions — the followers, if you will, of […]

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Olympics wrap up

This breaks down the Olympic results in an incisive way that I haven’t yet seen.

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Just in case you don’t know

or are living under a rock in the Twin Cities-Dave Schwartz is reading tonight from his new novel, Superpowers at 7pm at Dreamhaven. The book is released-go forth and attend/purchase!

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Total Oblivion, More or Less

All right, time for some bona fide big news. My novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, is going to be published by Bantam! Juliet Ulman at Bantam Spectra has bought it, and I’m just really thrilled since a lot of my friends and colleagues have had great experiences with her editorial expertise. This is truly […]

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not over!

Well, I think my frustration about the comment spam got the better of me (3700 comments in the queue now!) So I do think I want to blog again, at some point, but in a different venue. I would love to pull all of the poetics and philosophy and literary-advice-type posts into one wiki. But […]

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over

The spam dam broke and the hordes set up residency (1400+ in comment spam). Can’t get into the comments-destroys my browser-so in the slim chance you were posting a comment, sorry I probably won’t get to it. Anyway, that’s the spark but the fuel was there for awhile-I’m shutting the blog down. Trying to prune […]

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