13thFloor

Really thoughtful piece by Dennis Lim on the relationship between ghosts and cinema. Excerpts:...

The world is full of museums that don’t exist fully in three dimensions – museums described in words or drawn on paper; museum catalogues; museums on the web. There are also many museums that are the creation of artists, novelists and poets, and so have a strong thread of imagination running through them. The latter cast an...

Gritty and heartbreaking, this 1970s collection from the master of gekiga, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, was published in English in 2006....

November is coming, and you know what that means… National Novel Generation Month!...

Have fun storming the castle!...

It can't rain all the time....

Opening Statement of Mr. Harold Schoff, attorney for Mr. Coyote: My client, Mr. Wile E. Coyote, a resident of Arizona and contiguous states, does hereby bring suit for damages against the Acme Company, manufacturer and retail distributor of assorted merchandise, incorporated in Delaware and doing business in every state,...

During her many years of teaching introduction to fiction courses, Ann Charters developed an acute sense of which stories work most effectively in the classroom. She also discovered that writers, not editors, have the most interesting and useful things to say about the making and the meaning of fiction....

One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach - all the damn vampires....

In the depths of the mutant rain forest where the water falls each afternoon in a light filtered to vermilion, a feline stone idol stands against the opaque foliage....

Chick Tracts are booklets meant to convert the reader to christianity by any means possible: guilt, doubt, threat, etc. They are often sexist, racist, homophobic, and so on. Nevertheless, they are an fascinating example of effective propaganda....

I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?"...

Sir, the truth is, I talk to God all the time, and, no offense, but He never mentioned you....

In spite of its ominous literary associations, 1984 proved to be a rather quiet year for SF. There were no major scandals like 1983’s infamous Great Timescape Fiasco, no SF lines driven into oblivion by corporate greed and shortsightedness, no major editorial shakeups … but if you looked closely enough, in the right places,...

The Timewave Explorer is a web-based application for exploring Terence McKenna’s Timewave Zero....

Here's the cream of the crop: short stories, novelettes, novellas by science fiction writers already well known and awarded for their high-quality work in science fiction. These are writers like Poul Anderson, Joe Haldeman, Tanith Lee, George R. R. Martin, Robert Silverberg, James Tiptree, Jr, Vernor Vinge and Gene Wolfe....

Boy, was Spielberg ever wrong. Close Encounters my ass....

No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do....

In the early nineties (it might have been 1992, but it’s hard to remember when you’re having a good time) I joined a rock-and-roll band composed mostly of writers. The Rock Bottom Remainders were the brainchild of Kathi Kamen Goldmark, a book publicist and musician from San Francisco. The group included Dave Barry on lead...

The Mabinogion (Welsh pronunciation: [mabɪˈnɔɡjɔn] ⓘ) are the earliest Welsh prose stories, and belong to the Matter of Britain. The stories were compiled in Middle Welsh in the 12th–13th centuries from earlier oral traditions. There are two main source manuscripts, created c. 1350–1410, as well as a few earlier...

Time for a road trip......

With insight, humor, and practicality, Natalie Goldberg inspires writers and would-be writers to take the leap into writing skillfully and creatively. She offers suggestions, encouragement, and solid advice on many aspects of the writer’s craft: on writing from “first thoughts” (keep your hand moving, don’t cross out,...

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to...

Don't panic, and bring a towel....

The Way that can be articulately described is not the Unchanging Way. The name that can be said out loud is not the Unchanging Name. With your mouth unopened, and things left undefined, you stand at the beginning of the universe. Make definitions, and you are the measure of all creation....