Collin’s books, other books

Dinomynas, flying lizards, other local wildlife

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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

*Bangkok Noir*, French edition

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A French edition of Bangkok Noir is due out from Editions GOPE in May or June 2012.

12 nouvelles de John Burdett, Christopher G. Moore, Colin Cotterill, Stephen Leather, Pico Iyer, Timothy Hallinan, Dean Barrett, Eric Stone, Tew Bunnag, Alex Kerr, Vasit Dejkunjorn, Collin Piprell.

Par-delà le sourire thaï et le wai plein de grâce, s’étend un paysage ravagé par les conflits, les rancunes, la colère, la vengeance, les disparitions et la violence. Un monde où perte de la face,
… Read more

Immortality for secularists, wherein Joe Atheist cannot die

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There’s been much news, of late, concerning the planarian worm, which is effectively immortal. Unfortunately, this version of life everlasting offers little hope to us humans.

But there’s a fix, one that doesn’t mean we have to begin reproducing asexually if we want to persist to the planarian extent. Of necessity, I’ll argue, we’re already, always and forever, living in our “afterlife.”

Having our sex and living forever too

Here’s my theory, for whatever it’s worth, and in … Read more

1) Godwotterous writerly brain syndrome 2) Blaming your tools, looking for magic programs

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More writerly occupational hazards

Adopt a new writing program? Sure. Classic avoidance behavior, combined with the “let’s buy a new guitar because the old one doesn’t work” syndrome. Or was Scrivener something my writing project direly needed? Could this be the Rx for godwotterous writerly brain syndrome?

I’ve been thinking about the plasticity of the brain, and the notion that everyone from musicians to London taxi drivers grow relevant volumes of brain—in some cases, I’m going to imagine, … Read more

Mayan malarkey, reasons to relax in 2012

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So what’s new?

Whoop, whoop. The end is nigh, the end is nigh!  I’m told the ancient Mayans predicted that massive quantities of bad shit will hit the global fan this year.

Whatever, eh? It looks as though the Horsemen of the Apocalypse got a way early start on things, because it they’ve been galloping through our gardens for quite some time already.

I’ve experienced a wee taste of this myself. In fact it started around 7am on New … Read more

Chronicle of an urban drowning foretold

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Almost exactly a year ago I posted “Submarine garrets for starving writers” (4 November 2010), which foresaw the entire city of Bangkok serving as a recreational dive site. And that piece itself contained a link to an article (“One Born Every Minute“) I wrote 25 years ago wherein I interviewed a visiting extraterrestrial who foresaw the submersion of Bangkok within another three decades. The TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand), I suggested, would hail his proposals … Read more

Inverse relations and natural law (The Gospel According to Ellie)

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Bangkok cinemas, some of them, have taken to offering movies in “4D.” Now the moving images are complemented with smells—certain colorful old cinemas, sadly gone now, were way ahead of them on that front. And you might get rumblings in your seat, though these are often now more in sync with events on the screen that the tremblors from street traffic outside used to be. Other effects include fog and drizzle and stuff they originally built cinemas to shield you … Read more

Fable with parasites II: Owl of Minerva flies at the turn of the worm

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Does Fate reflect a wormish agenda? We looked at aspects of this question in the last two posts. Read on for even more sinister developments.

Once upon a time within some dimension or another, a species of worm with an interesting civilization embraced a complex body of beliefs, not all of them consistent with one another, but that is in the nature of things.

Their consciousness, if we may call it such, was a collective phenomenon; taken individually, these worms … Read more

Fable with parasites I: Bravery lies in the brain of the beholder

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When neural parasites meet global warming: Trouble for all of us may be brewing on a remote uncharted island.

Who’s driving the bus, human beings or their parasites? From a manuscript found under a bed:

Let us visit an outlying island that must remain nameless. It is only uncertainly part of a tiny outlying archipelago, itself only uncertainly part of Indonesia which, with some 17,000 islands, is the largest archipelago nation in the world. This island barely breaks the surface … Read more