Links
COHORTS AND COLLABORATORS
Viktor was the art director for Half-Life 2; working with him was a great privilege. I wrote the brochure for the “Vulkan Brothers Industrial Heritage Plesurewerks,” an incredible series of paintings. He’s gone to Paris.
My first real editor, Ellen bought some of my best early stories for Omni, and more recently for SciFiction.com.
Paul and I wrote one story together, “Sleep is Where You Find It,” relating the adventures of a nightmare version of the great photographer Weegee. Alternate title: “The Human Head Cakebox Murders.”
For years, Chet and Erik were legendary figures of mythic status to me. They still are, except now I can throw things over my shoulder and hit them.
Rudy and I wrote two stories about crazed surfers, Zep and Delbert: “Probability Pipeline” and “Chaos Surfari.” We also wrote “The Andy Warhol Sand Candle.” These have all been collected in various of Rudy’s collections.
John and I wrote a novella called “Pearlywhite,” fusing the influences of Digimon and the San Francisco Tenderloin.
OTHER GOOD STUFF
A Fan’s Notes for gamers. Weird and entertaining novel obsessed with games.
Matthew Derby’s first collection of linked short stories, which reminded me of Phil Dick, George Saunders and Raymond Carver all jostling in the same skull. I hope he does more. (You’ll have to start up the Flash page, it looks like, to get the full Super Flat Times show. The main site has turned into a blog. Imagine that!) Speaking of
Occasionally his stories appear online. Here’s what I can find right now, starting with one of my very favorites:
Mandatory. I don’t want to say what kind of story this is, but it’s the best of its kind ever.
Since “My Flamboyant Grandson” and “Jon” are no longer online at the New Yorker, you’ll have to wait for his next collection, In Persuasion Nation.
An extensive archive of science fiction, both original and classic reprints, at the sadly cancelled SciFiction branch of Scifi.com. For five and a half years, the best source of original fiction online, ably edited by Ellen Datlow. (This archive is supposedly going dark soon, but I’ll leave it linked until it’s gone.)
It’s not enough that Peter Watts set his first novel, Starfish, in a setting fairly rare for science fiction — a deepsea research base — he went the next step and peopled it with a full cast of psychopaths, a crew that I’d be happy to see set upon and devour the cast of Firefly. Watts has put Starfish and its sequel, Maelstrom, online for free, for the taking. Wha–?
