Tiananmen

每年，在我记不清楚的岁月里，我在1989年6月4日都会非常难过，而且感到相当孤独。今年也不例外。我的记忆会逐渐消失，但我的心永远是坚强的，我将永远找时间来回忆，我希望我不会独自回忆。 Every year, for more years than I can clearly remember, I get very sad on 4 June 1989, and I feel quite lonely. This year is no exception. [...]

The Nomenclature of Fear

‘After a time, I no longer heard my words but only the sound of my voice, and saw only the faint trace of a smile, which spread from one [...]

Guest

‘For a split-second his pupils flare, and his nostrils, and he raises his chin as if roused by the scent of something, but then his gaze slips, eyes unfocussed [...]

You Shall Know Them by Their Pitchforks

‘Our memories from before do not add up. Some of us remember a wasteland, others recall green countryside and thriving towns. Ahktar remembers that he served as president of [...]

My standard for verisimilitude

‘My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for [...]

Morning Song

I love the precision of the pauses in ‘Morning Song’, particularly the semicolon (the only one Plath uses in the poem) after ‘notes’. Beautiful. ‘Your mouth opens clean as [...]

The Kromlau Gambit

‘Severed of flesh and earth, the dog’s soul remembered. It remembered wolf and jackal. Becoming rage and anger, it remembered death carried in saucer eyes and cunning carried in [...]

Corwick Grows

‘But then I see how the limits of the city have changed. The furthest estates are shrouded in darkness where street lights should keep them aglow. And the houses [...]

The Color of Distance

‘Ani’s ears lifted, this time in surprise. Deep work was dangerous. She remembered the first time she had attempted it. She had become so attuned to the bird she [...]

Gravity of the Flux

‘Miami Vice is above all a great film on the human condition in a time of flux. Everything progresses at top speed (the meetings, the love affairs, the reversals, [...]

Dystopia for Realists

‘Calls for accountability and transparency might sound technocratic and unambitious. But the right to an explanation of how an automated decision-making tool arrived at a particular outcome mitigates against [...]

Real Tigers

‘Cigarette smouldering in hand he shambled into the lane, a coronet of smoke lingering in the air behind him, like an image of a wandering spirit… ‘Which lasted but [...]

Follow the Ecstasy

‘When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them – and that is of course because they accept the system and identify themselves with it. All love and [...]

James Sallis

‘My model’s more the European – someone like [Raymond] Queneau, who wrote novels, poems, essays and popular songs, was a phenomenal editor… He didn’t have to check one or [...]