Posted inWeblog Exclusive

Left Behind

This collage appears in Eye Contact, the literary magazine I advise at Seton Hill University where I teach. The theme for this particular issue of the magazine was "truth." I clipped words and phrases out of Weekly World News; when I began, I thought I'd build a collage of freaky and bizarre headlines, but I found myself instead pulling out the more "normal" terms and assembling them in an abnormal way. The "shout out" style of the excessive typography, I'm hoping, renders everything strangely familiar. I believe the "left behind" phrase at the center originally referred to that whole "Left…
December 10, 2004Posted inWeblog Exclusive
Posted inNot Dead Yet: Print Reviews

Eve by Aurelio O’Brien

I don't read science fiction novels as often as I used to, but some book premises are so wacky that you just gotta see whether the author can pull them off. Such is the case with Eve by Aurelio O'Brien, a bizarre story about an outdated robot and his owner, lost amid a Huxlean culture in the distant future. In the 31st century, death is an anachronism, and bio-engineered "creature comforts" dominate the world, functioning solely to keep humans (a.k.a. "Randoms" since they weren't technologically programmed or engineered) in an eternal state of bliss. Machines are an anachronism -- mankind…
November 8, 2004Posted inNot Dead Yet: Print Reviews