A.D. 260, somewhere in Campania, a Neoplatonist slept among a multitude of empty amphorae after a heated debate with a Cretan who also happened to be a Cynic. This was his tangled dream—
Mind and Soul take a walk through a garden on the newly minted Earth. And there they come upon Demiurge still busy in his work. Continue reading
In 2008 I worked at a college that required an hour commute. To amuse myself, I would imagine myself as a different character each morning then compose a short story based loosely on my commute. Afterwards I would write them down and post them to my blog. They began as one-paragraph shorts, but with time and practice I grew more ambitious.
In this example, I imagined myself as 007 during my morning commute. Continue reading
“Are you a technician or a driveling idiot?” — “The Proud Robot” (1943)
The story goes that science-fiction writer, Henry Kuttner, named his inebriated and gifted scientist “Gallagher” while writing “The Time Locker” then mistakenly called him “Galloway” when writing its sequel. And after realizing his error, Kuttner combined the names giving “Galloway Gallagher” his full name. Continue reading
When he was alive, my dad and I always swapped stories about any of the many odd dreams we would dream. One morning he sat giggling to himself at the table. He told me he had the craziest dream and after he told me, I found it so funny that I wrote it down for posterity. So here is George Gutschke’s crazy dream. Continue reading
One Sunday as a child, I sat in church listening to our pastor deliver a sermon on the Last Judgement. Being a kid with an active imagination, I envisioned angels using TVs to show sinners our sins.
In the Anglo-Saxon tradition of poetry, poets used cadence rather than rhyme to weave their spell. These poets used alliteration to drive the beat of their spoken words. Being a fan of Anglo-Saxon poetry, I have tried to tried to do the same. Continue reading
A highway in Strange Loop, Texas—while driving home today, I hit upon what I believed was a bright idea and instantly snapped my fingers. Then I caught myself and asked aloud, “I wonder who first thought to finger snap when hitting upon a bright idea?”
And as my car hugged the curvature of space and time, rocketing past the farms skirting the rural highway, this question sent my mind reeling. Continue reading
May 26, 2017.
In a brittle issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from November 1952, I stumbled across a short story entitled “Bem” by sci-fi author Charles T. Webb. His story so amused me that I decided to write my own using “Bem” as one inspiration and the 1897 UFO crash in Aurora, Texas as another. And without my knowing it, my prose fell into rhythm with rhymes and near rhymes, and to my amazement, I had the first two stanzas of a poem.
Any fans of sci-writer Henry Kuttner will see that I also took inspiration from his Galloway Gallagher story entitled “The World Is Mine” first published in Astounding Stories in June 1943 under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett.
MARTIAN DEATH RAY 