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A Report on the Ontological Status of Somebody’s Acting Head
Subject: Update Concerning Somebody’s Acting Head Classification: Ultra Secret – For University MFA Eyes Only As none of you may know, I am a self-appointed detective investigating the current ongoing fiasco occurring in Hong Kong. But now I am depressed because I have discovered the truth about the Acting Head, my nemesis. My greatest fear was manifesting. Could I have been unwittingly wormholed into a Thomas Pynchon novel? When praying to the deities, Jesus, Peter Hessler, and Kim Kardashian didn’t work, I decided to take matters into my own hands and improvise a voodoo doll out of unwashed socks, a moldering potato, and my emergency sewing kit. Still nothing. Then…
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What’s so Golden About the Golden Age of SF, Anyway?
Some Broad Sweeping Judgments on Golden Age Science Fiction Made a Sci-Fictioneer, 3rd Class Aboard the Great MFA Space Ark, S.S. Run Run Shaw (currently docked at Space Station Hong Kong, itself tidally locked in orbit above Planet China). Cultural Stability Minister’s Warning: Reading this pun-riddled text may be hazardous to your mental well-being. Not all SF is created equal as demonstrated by The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, a Hugo awarded SF author from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. His novel came to me highly recommended. Having never heard of him and wondering how that could be and being ordered to read him ASAP, I gave Bester,…
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Subversions into the Green Hills of Songpan
As a young boy, I only had two ambitions. The first was of being a cowboy in the Wild West, riding lonely mountain trails, eating peyote, consulting Navajo shamans, and pilfering forgotten ghost towns. The other was to go to China like Marco Polo exploring its wilds and cities along the Silk Road in search of the real General Tso, the great Qing Dynasty soldier-statesman made famous by Chinese takeout menus the world over. But never in my wildest, childish hallucinations could I have imagined that I would discover an amalgam of these in reality, as if a chapter in the story of my life became a chimerical tale of…
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How to Act Now Before Your Total Abnilisation (All major credit cards accepted!)
A Note to the Reader: “How to Act Now Before Your Total Abnilisation†is a work of cosmic pseudepigraphy by American fabulist Matt Muller, significant for its experimental style and its reputation as one of the most difficult works of metafictional advertisement in the American language. Its first draft written in Chengdu, China over a period of 3 hours, and first published online minutes later, just 24 hours before it would be made to disappear from Chinese cyberspace. The entire work is written in a falsely eloquent language, consisting of a mélange of standard American and neologistic jargon, which many critics believe attempts to recreate a simulacrum of expertise and…
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US Department of Homeland Security agents to receive specialized surveillance training in the PRC
By Matt, Know Knews (WASHINGTON – Know Knews) The US Department of Homeland Security has reportedly prepared its personnel to receive specialized surveillance training in the People’s Republic of China. The US agents will gain innovative solutions to improve national security. ÂDHS personnel are to arrive at mainland China data mining hubs a month before the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, and stay a month after US commemorative ceremonies, according to a new agreement between PRC’s Bureau of Harmonization & Minority Affairs and the US Department of Homeland Security, Know Knews reports. “This partnership will slather on an extra juicy layer of security to boost and aid all the other security…