Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
As predicted, the worlds described in MOM and Genesis 2.0 lie just down the road. I wrote this “science fiction” in full knowledge it might soon be better described as history. And I was right. Consider the exponential advances of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nanotech; see what transformations they have already wrought.
Read the MAGIC CIRCLES novels for a preview of how the human condition might soon be further shaped, for example, by a global pandemic — one far … Read more
Compared to 2020, all previous years, even the Disco Era, were the golden age of human existence.
Dave Barry, Washington Post
Good riddance 2020. The year from Hell, right? So everyone says. But it’s really only a matter of how you look at it.
Whatever. Here’s something from a collection I call “Leary’s Laws,” call it a gloss on Dave Barry’s above comment.
… Read moreThings
Even among loyal fans, after only four or five Kicking Dogs chapters and a few SIDECARS, interest in this project has waned. Fizzled away to fuck all, in fact.
The last bit is classic Leary alliteration, though he’d never say “fuck.”
… Read moreLeary habitually seasoned his conversation with “gosh” and “darn.” Gosh was salt, and darn was pepper. Sometimes, if a communication required a bit of mustard, he might go so far as to say “frigging.” That’s how I knew the
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
Leary here. Wherever that might be (not to mention when).
Current affairs written on the wind (“mere ephemera,” according to my editor, which I didn’t ask). Right now, many of you folk back in 2011 will be fretting about political events in Egypt. The papers should be full of it. (You could still read newspapers back then, and they were often full of it.) No doubt the TV networks will be talking it up like they discovered Egypt only last … Read more
Yesterday I was riding the BTS here in Bangkok, when I noticed a guy standing in the corner of the car. What first caught my attention was his face, which was bathed in an unholy glow. Short of sleep as I was, my first thought was, yow, this is some kind of divine messenger, maybe sent by my dear, departed mother to have another go at finally setting me straight.
Then I realized the light came from the iPad he … Read more
Leary here… Darn it, these last few days we’ve gone from spinning in our pre-graves to pre-obits to being pre-dead.
Whatever. Like some wise man once said, not me: Getting old is the only way there is of living a long time. And I want to live a long time. Gosh. The things that go on in this life, you just don’t want to miss what’s gonna happen next.
And here I am, coming to you from some time after … Read more
Here’s something from a collection I call “Leary’s Laws.”
“Things are always going to get worse, and we just have to take what friggin’ solace we can from that. What it means, we’re always living in a golden age, at least looking back from any time in the future.”
(Leary, in Yawn: A Thriller, by Collin Piprell)
So go ahead and take what solace you can from that. You might also want to stock up on canned … Read more
Me again. It seems Thailand is having its own little Apocalypse, back there where you folks are now. What with the Red Shirts, and the Yellow Shirts and the Multi-colors and one thing and another. The past few days have seen the hopes of all right-thinking people taking a roller-coaster ride. Meanwhile, it’s plain to see some other people believe it’s to their advantage to have civil society explode into real strife, and to heck with the good of the … Read more
Leary here. I see Collin is worried about where this world is headed. And well he might be. Much of what he says about the iPad is true, but he doesn’t foresee the half of it, or the other snazzy devices coming just around the corner.
Anyway, I was reading some old notes the other day, stuff from way back at the start of my second half-century. I see that one day in Bangkok in 2010 I was riding the … Read more