The creator of the online fiction review site A Story a Day Keeps Boredom Away recently reviewed all of the stories in the new Dark Faith anthology. He had this to say about my story “Chimeras & Grotesqueries”: I love the type of story that starts with a preface declaring that what follows was found…
Category: Religion & Philosophy
Gloom Is Good: The Rise of the New Pessimists
“Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko told us in 1987 (echoing and perhaps parodying Ayn Rand‘s long-running, uber-egoistic economic cant). For all we know, he may be gearing up to deliver us a repackaged version of the same message later this year when Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps hits theaters. But regardless of what Gekko’s…
Mythic Vision: Its lack killed NASA, its recovery may save us all
I’ve been observing with great interest the flurry of recent articles, essays, and editorials about the original moon landing and subsequent implosion of the U.S. space program. By far the most fascinating and moving is the essay by Tom Wolfe that appeared in The New York Times two days ago. Titled “One Giant Leap to…
Religion, voluntary poverty, and cultural survival in an age of collapse
Or actually, what I present here are quotes of the day, plural. Both are from John Michael Greer, he of the liquid prose and fearsome erudition, and one of the most important writers about the civilizational trajectory we’re pursuing right now. [Toynbee’s insight] that religion very often serves as the conduit by which the cultural…
Nietzsche: Loving existence even though it’s horrifying and absurd
A review of Keith Ansell Pearson’s How to Read Nietzsche (2005) at The Journal of Nietzsche Studies features the following paragraph, which, with its focus on Nietzsche and its description of a worldview based on tragedy and horror, is a quintessential example of the type of writing that has unfailingly arrested me with a hypnotic…
The Human Race at a Crossroads
Guy McPherson, professor of conservation biology at the University of Arizona, pulls no punches in his May 21 essay, “Humanity at a crossroads.” In fact, he begins with his punchline itself: The evidence is gaining increasing clarity: We’ve reached a crossroads unlike any other in human history. One path leads to despair for Homo industrialis….
Learning the value of pessimism from ancient Stoics and Christians
Here’s the perfect reality check for all of the current ill-conceived hopes for a swift economic “recovery,” defined as a return to our previous bubblicious state of unfettered (and, as it turned out, fake) economic growth and “greed is good”-induced cultural mania: “For a happier life, shake off your misplaced optimism” — Financial Times, April…
Fiction as Religion: Some good words about DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP
Here’s something for those of you who have read or are thinking about reading my first book, the cosmic-spiritual horror collection Divinations of the Deep (Ash-Tree Press, 2002). Last month Des Lewis, better known to the world at large as extremely prolific and much-respected weird horror author and editor D.F. Lewis, bought a copy of…
Nietzsche on the horror of existence
[NOTE: For another post about Nietzsche and horror, see “Nietzsche: Loving existence even though it’s horrifying and absurd.”] Every lover of books can narrate a personal history of his or her encounters with books and authors whose influence proved to be life-changing. For me, the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is one of those…
Robert Anton Wilson and reality tunnels: a retrospective reflection
About a week ago, horror writer Mark Samuels — who’s a friend of mine, and whom I interviewed here at the Teeming Brain a couple of years ago — started a discussion thread at the Shocklines message boards about the concept of “reality tunnels” as expressed and examined in the work of one of my…