Benjamin Sobieck

Moving between stases

The ending of "Tender is the Flesh" is still the one that goes hardest. I'm not spoiling it, but you know from about the third page that Bazterrica can absolutely stick the landing. And she does. This is very hard to do in horror, because so much of the suspense is the anticipation of what comes next. Rising action is easy. Ending it is not. 
          
          What ending goes hardest for you?

Anxiety is experiencing time in reverse. You feel the hot breath of some future tragedy run down your neck, and when one actually arrives, there's a sense of relief. It's all backward.

Congratulations to this year’s Watty awards winners!

If the psychic parts of the Zandra stories are interesting to you, I *highly* recommend “Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis” by Annie Jacobsen. 
          
          It’s non-fiction, and it goes into the history of psychics and the U.S. military, all pulled from primary sources and declassified documents. The research and journalism that went into it is incredible.
          
          It doesn’t so much make a case for or against the existence of psychics as it does show how the military approached the subject. To that end, the most shocking revelation is how much money was thrown at the issue, and how both sides of the Cold War used psychics as counterintelligence tools. 
          
          That isn’t to say there isn’t a there there, but there’s a lot of room for interpretation. 
          
          When you’re done with “Phenomena,” balance it out with a book about statistics, like “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.” 
          
          If that’s too much of an ask, I’ll offer this summary of one of my favorite Nassim Nicholas Taleb pieces:
          
          “Randomness has no obligation to appear random.”

If I check out of here before they announce aliens are really real for real, I am going to be pissed. And also dead. But still very pissed.

It snowed and it's cold. All I want to do is drink coffee, sit by the fire, read, write, and snooze with the pets.

3i Atlas is a comet, a piece of alien tech, or something else.
          
          But so is my toaster.

You know how in fiction the “bad guys” usually wear masks over their faces? The “good guys” have theirs visible.
          
          You know?

Uh oh: I'm at the point in my life where I really enjoy crosswords.