Thinking on the Highway Virus – 2
Another big part of the Highway Virus series, and another aspect that seems prima facie unlikely, is the presence of the trogg dogs. They are roving packs of canine-like scavengers,…
A Legacy of Annihiliation
Palahniuk takes an expansive approach to the culling song in his book Lullaby. For those who have not read the book, it features a bedtime poem, the recitation of which…
Rekindling Bloodlust, Die Hard style
I’ve been thinking (too much) lately about the first Die Hard movie. It’s a movie that dabbles in almost every cliche it can find, yet it manages to hold itself…
Thinking on the Highway Virus 1
I started the Highway Virus series, short stories of a future apocalyptic world, following the global fears of the bird flu virus several years ago, where I imagined a future…
Snowmobiles of Doom
“Every generation wants to be the last.” That is one of the many mantras repeated throughout Lullaby (like I said before, Palahniuk’s literary strategies would fall flat from the pen…
Time out of step
Do you ever have one of those days when every step you take seems to take you further into a state of increasing unreality? You are one step out of…
Damn that Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk does things that should not work. There is a quality to his writing that is prima facie absurd. It shouldn’t work. Kurt Vonnegut was the same way. It…
The Screwfly and the Y
I recently read “The Screwfly Solution” by James Tiptree Jr., although I think it was published under a different psuedonym, Raccoona Sheldon, all pen names for the actual person Alice…
The Death of Skynet’s old, alcoholic uncle… or What will the aliens do?
Some channels quietly switched off their analog signals last month. Maybe one day we will be all digital – but it looks like we will have to wait a little…
Watchmen & the future of Highway Virus
The Highway Virus series is a bunch of stories about a future world devastated by a virus. About halfway through it, as I was trying to turn my rambling notes…