Collin Piprell

I’m in the business of generating alternative realities and then exploring them. This, I claim, is not schizophrenia. A Canadian writer and editor based in Bangkok, I've also lived in England, where I did graduate work at Oxford, and in Kuwait, where I learned to sail, waterski, and make a credible red wine in plastic garbage bins. At the end of 2008, I resigned as editorial director at Dragon Art Media (Bangkok, Phuket, Koh Samui, Bali) to devote myself to writing. My chief skills are words and tunnels. Before the Oxford and Kuwait years, my employment experience included, among other things, four jobs as a driller and stope leader in mines and tunnels in Ontario and Quebec. (One of my few regrets in this life is having had to refuse a development mining job in Greenland.) There’s been little call for tunneling these days, but since moving to Thailand I've produced many articles on a wide variety of topics, four novels, a collection of occasional pieces, a diving guide to Thailand, another book on diving, and a book on Thailand’s coral reefs. I've also co-authored a book on Thailand’s national parks. I've taught writing at a local university (Thammasat), and I conduct occasional writing workshops for publishing companies and community organizations. I'm currently at work on a fifth novel, the second of a futuristic trilogy that begins with *MOM,*, now available on amazon.com. Books by Collin Piprell (currently out of print, aside from MOM and Diving in Thailand): *MOM* (http://tinyurl.com/y9am7lq) *Yawn* (A Thriller) Bangkok: Asia Books, 2000 *Kicking Dogs* (Bangkok: Asia Books, 2001) *Bangkok Knights* (Bangkok: Asia Books, 2001) (The previous three titles need a new home.) *Bangkok Old Hand* (Bangkok: Post Books, 1993) *Diving in Thailand* (Singapore: Times Editions; U.S.A.: Hippocrene Books, 1994, 2000), photographs by Ashley J. Boyd. *Thailand’s Coral Reefs* (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1993), photographs by Ashley J. Boyd. * Thailand: The Kingdom Beneath the Sea* (Bangkok: Artasia Press, 1991), photographs by Ashley J. Boyd. * National Parks Thailand* (Bangkok: IFPC, 1993, 1995), with Denis Gray and Mark Graham Prospective agents and publishers are welcome to contact me at collin.piprell@gmail.com.

They’re everywhere! More on neural parasites

by

Soon there’ll be nowhere left in the world to run to, no place to hide.

In response to something I posted on neural parasites some time ago —  “Fable with parasites I: Bravery lies in the brain of the beholder” — Steve Hyde said this: “Reminds me of those tourists that have been taken over by their backpacks … [Like the chickens in your post], they’re … known to fearlessly approach dangerous beasts.” I believe he was referring to … Read more

New you’s: Modular commodification

by

 

I am Nikon. I am my iPhone. I am a chimera, a mongrel composite of my Levis, my Dockers, my Tilly hat, my Bush Country SUV.

I am whoever I choose to be. I am whatever. I am a staunch iconic mashup doing my part to keep the wheels of industry turning. I am my modular personality du jour compliments of the advertising industry and my own f***wittedness. Cool.

 

But it gets weirder than that. And maybe more … Read more

Herbal Happiness (Pharmaceutical Virtues)

by

Greetings. I’ve been away for a while, distracted by travel, a restive Muse, this and that.

Writers are notoriously perceptive, and so it is that, during my travels, I saw that drugstores were not the same drugstores I used to go to and say gimme some aspirin, or “I’d like a packet of those things, you know … Yeah. No, no! You don’t have to wave them around, for chrissake.” Like much else in our world, things have changed since … Read more

Pussy hounds, rejoice?

by

 

Pussy hounds, rejoice! Your behavior may be built into existence almost from the outset. Here is an intriguing New Scientist video clip from a couple of years ago (“‘Intelligent’ oil droplet navigates chemical maze”). Could it be that this pass at sentience even in drops of oil may help to legitimize dick-directed behavior in higher organisms?

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s ‘Crystals, Information and the Origin of Life,’ a recent article from Technology Review that … Read more

Central irony of our age?

by

The central irony of our age: a powerful totalitarian drift promising individual empowerment. (Epigrams’R’Us, eh?)

Individually and collectively, we blithely speed towards a precipice. Or so it seems, of this jet-lagged morning, just back from a computer-, Internet-, and phone-less island sojourn.

Are we modern folk evolving as mere arms & legs for our smartphones? The reality of current tendencies may be even more sinister than that. I’m too sleepy to develop that notion any further just now. Here’s just … Read more

*Bangkok Noir* in French

by

A darker view of Bangkok.

Photo by Steve Gatto

The French edition of Bangkok Noir is on the shelves. 

Les auteurs de Bangkok Noir

John Burdett

Stephen Leather

Pico Iyer

Colin Cotterill

Christopher G. Moore

Tew Bunnag

Timothy Hallinan

Alex Kerr

Dean Barrett

Vasit Dejkunjorn

Eric Stone

And me too:

Collin Piprell

 

For another, darkly comic view:

Kindle

Amazon (print)

Smashwords

… Read more

Autonomous smartphones: Is your gadget evolving?

by

So I’m sending an SMS on my iPhone, and I’m using “jesus christly” as a compound adjective, when this phone, even though it’s only a 2G model, takes the liberty of capitalizing “Jesus”. What’s next? It’ll probably start offering prayers to Him on my behalf. Maybe even promising I’ll do a 20-year tour of duty as a missionary in Africa if only the babe over there at that other table, here in Starbucks (which I never frequent), gives … Read more

Free e-book from C.G. Moore

by

Christopher Moore’s *Waiting for the Lady* should see a jump in sales.

Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is leaving Burma for the first time in 24 years. Her first foreign visit will be to Bangkok, where she will attend the World Economic Forum. She is expected to arrive in Bangkok on 30th May. Then she will travel to Europe to address the International Labour Conference in Geneva and to finally accept her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo … Read more

Getting away from it all: Now & then

by


Sometimes, e.g. when I look around a Skytrain car and see people’s faces lit in the unholy glow of iPad screens (see “Digital bedlam”)—when I notice the wires dangling from people’s heads, the animated conversations with invisible presences on the part of people sporting no visible gadgetry at all, the poke-poking and thumbing of games and messages and searches for the meaning of life—it seems to me that these changes in our behavior have been sudden. Just last … Read more

Dinomynas, flying lizards, other local wildlife

by

Following my post regarding Nigel’s attempts to kill me, I remembered another myna story, a magazine piece I’d written years ago. How did mynas come to figure so large in my life?

I’m lying there by the pool with last night’s wine pouring out of me, dozing and reading Roddy Doyle by turns, my own Muse stirring within, a touch of the Irish in her voice, rousing me, from time to time, to sit up and drip ink and … Read more