Analysis for the rest of us
I keep trying to trace this affliction. It goes further than I forget.
When did I first start to un-use my name?
(This is me speaking – the author, the actor, the liar – whatever it is I do. Don’t be confused. This isn’t an installment in a multi-part serial; this is just my life.)
Towns die, when their time comes. The town I grew up in died right under my feet — it died while I watched. It isn’t even on the map anymore.
Once there were hundreds of towns like it: far flung on the frontier, each nestled in the shadow of an atmospheric processing tower whose rumbling works had been patiently revising the climate for centuries. In its heyday atmospheric processing employed thousands. It was the cornerstone industry of country life on this planet, the great smoking hubs at the crossroads of rude paths that linked wildernesses more hostile than anyone young today can easily imagine.
In those days we were fighting both the rocks and sand and frigid cold of the old world along with a million kinds of aggressive and voracious life from the new. Colonization isn’t for the faint of heart. In my grandfather’s time as many travelers stumbled into town just to die as to find a drink or a bed.
But eventually the sky turned blue, and one by one the processing towers were decommissioned. Including ours.
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The invasion of Cassiopeia was age-inappropriate for the child: that much was clear.
All the worst words in the dictionary were being acted out live, and that violated the Standard with respect to age-appropriate subject matter. The child was present, which made the Standard paramount. On the other hand, duty was paramount.
The soldier was of the highest quality. No expense had been spared in his manufacture or maintenance. He was beautiful, too. He was as much a parade piece as a tool. Never the less, considering two things to be simultaneously paramount upset him.
The child bleated, “Where’s my mom?”
And now the concluding chapter of The Seventh Rule, another free science-fiction serial from the likes of me. The complete story is available in print in my latest anthology, Eleven Electric Lies, which you might buy a copy of and then bring along for signing at the Toronto Comic Con! I hope to see you (or a duly appointed representative) there, March 18-20, 2011.
This is the sixth and second to last installment of my new serial, The Seventh Rule…
In an homage to counting in order, I’d like to present the fifth installment of my freshest serial, The Seventh Rule…
ELEVEN ELECTRIC LIES, cover illustration by the author
Before we continue with the current serial, I’d like to mention that my latest round-up of stories is available in a new printed edition, available today via the presses of Lulu. If you still like books, or know somebody else who still likes books, or just like supporting independent publishing by putting money in the pockets of the artists you enjoy, please consider ordering a copy or two of Eleven Electric Lies: Collected Stories Volume III.
Meanwhile, here’s the third installment of The Seventh Rule…
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Without needless preamble, here is the second installment of my freshest serial, delivered in seven short parts: The Seventh Rule...
The Seventh Rule, a web serial by Cheeseburger Brown; illustration by the author
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Econoklastic
A Brief History of Who I Am
Last week, in my post A Brief History of Who I’m Not, I explained the history of my spectrum of noms de plume from fluorescence to brown. But, of course, the name is not the thing. It’s just a noise.
I’m the thing. That is, I have a persistent delusion of being a specific entity and that’s close enough for our purposes today. Whether I literally am my identity or instead my identity is a byproduct of me is not a student loan I’m willing to take out.
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