science fiction
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MOOD INDIGO: STORIES NOW AVAILABLE
A new collection of short fiction by your’s truly is now available through the evil capitalists at Amazon here: Moon Indigo This collection spans a decade of output and includes both short stories and pieces of micro fiction, or flash fiction depending on your opinion. Many of these stories have appeared online in different magazines/journals,…
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Bradbury Makes Pulp into Paper
Most people want to be shiny quarters Just punched out of the mint Jingling in cattle-like surety Marveling at the cleverness of their security. Stick a pen in their hands Paper under their digits And watch the ink make potty Pooling on the paper like a child Losing their sobriety. Its panic plain and simple…
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See Dinosaurs as Real as Life!
It was the sound of mastication that really set her off. The nerve-wracking squanch squanch of the brachiosaur’s curved white teeth echoed loudly in the primordial setting of jungle ferns. “Why is this stupid thing so loud?” The curator turned to look at her, eyes just slightly squinting. “Ma’am, the brachiosaur was an herbivore, our recreation is…
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Sci-Fi Society
We were young crowded around those tables knocking elbows cockeyed looking at the ladies trying to be suave trying to be Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart with Cagney faces but we played fire with words hitting keys hard typewriters splintering that wide future seductive, erotic in the way virgin boys dreamed about it while the…
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Enigma VI {part 1}
The icepack cracked suddenly, reminder of the megatons of frozen nitrogen doing its inexorable slow march across Tombaugh Regio. The lander from Pluto Expedition VI stood safely on the granite-hard shelf of water ice overlooking the glaciers, its ultra-bright spotlights shining on a lone figure making its way over tumbled chunks of ice painted pink…
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Welcome to the Machine
It was a red-letter day in the history of science. They had come to the Artificial Intelligence laboratory by the dozens; each of them one of the greatest minds from nearly every field of human intellectual endeavor. Here they congregated to participate in the penultimate Turing test of the Google Omni-Device™, the world’s most advanced…
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Some Recent Drawings
I’ve been working on several writing projects lately…poetry, short stories, and a big essay on the lyrics of Van Dyke Parks. In the interim I have also completed some new artwork. There are not enough hours in the month to work on everything equally, as my brain jumps from one thing to another so my…
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The Future Past Due
My new book, The Future Past Due, is now available on Amazon.com and other distribution outlets! As the back description states, “The future is long past due. Inside this book is an equal mix of mystery, history, imagination, poetry, and science fiction. From worlds long turned to ash, to ashes reborn into worlds; find within…
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Mars 3
The sun sets on the lowest tide Mars had ever seen. Small creatures clung to the basaltic rocks and waved tiny flagella at that distant star, almost as if that plaintive gesture of goodbye would allow for one more perfect day. Now, the ebb and flow of the stinging, salted seas was waning. Their dark…
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Inter(less than)stellar
Interstellar A film by Christopher Nolan I was going to write something very detailed and profound about Interstellar immediately after seeing it. I loved the movie. I loved Matthew McConaughey and his motley crew’s mission to save the human race. I just feel that what I saw wasn’t what I wanted to see. Years of…
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Dredgings From the Sketchbooks
Sharing some of the things I have in my sketchbooks:
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What is and Should Never Be
This is a short “worst-case scenario” vision of America’s possible future. For an even more compelling and plausible take, please read Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right…
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The Ultimate Trip
I was around 10 years old when I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey on my local PBS station, KCET Los Angeles. I was flipping through the channels when I stumbled upon the sight of a giant room awash in red light within which, moving along to the sound of classical music, a round vehicle…
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Some (Random) Drawings
I love science fiction. Love it. Alien life-forms, sentient robots, spaceships, huge Ideas with that earned capital I. The first of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books introduced us to the planet-city Trantor. This is a pen sketch that I did imagining a panorama of part of this world: I also love computer history, so combining that…
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R-102
This is an old drawing of mine circa 2006. Its a view of a fantasy city somewhere in North America, as a young man watches the (unbuilt) British airship R-102 flying out of a rain cloud.
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“Bradbury was right!”
Out of the sun came the flaming silver needles. Landing in amongst the fragile bone-chess cities, red sand kicked up hard into quiet pale blue skies, was a ship from the third planet. The men inside, grizzled and fuzzy-faced, looked out the portholes and exclaimed each in turn, “Bradbury was right!” The dry seabeds rolled…
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Another Place
The skies were yellow, the rain more like a mist of diluted hydrochloric acid than water. As we walked over the small hilly rise, below us was the panorama of what used to be Washington, DC. The monuments had been mined for their limestone and great pits were dug into the National Mall. Miles of…
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The Revisionist
Temporarily lost in space and time
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Empty and Endless
The entire planet was covered in an intricate network of roads, the architecture familiar and alien at the same time…but nothing outside of the wind whistling through marble arches was heard. Empty, empty and endless.
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Inspace
Garcia held onto the fusion radiator assembly, looking towards the bright light of Beta Centauri. She felt at one with the cosmos, right now at this perfect moment in time. She knew-and soon the solar system of her birth would know too; humankind was not alone in the universe. The hour would come when we…
The Numinous Cosmos 