Even Exonormal Organizations Need New Blood (Backstory: Originally published in the long-dead online magazine Revolution Science Fiction in 2001, this is how the sausage is made, with a few changes to remove mention of a particular comics-industry sex pest. This is where the whole St. Remedius story got its start: from an article in the Wall Street Journal about how both the FBI and CIA were sending recruiters to Fort Lauderdale and…
Category: Backstories & Fragments
Backstories: “Apple, Microsoft Start Lines of Action Figures”
Introducing the Steve Kosh Action Figure (Backstory: Originally published in the long-dead online magazine Revolution Science Fiction in 2001, this one actually had a basis of truth, or at least speculative truthiness we now call “clickbait.” Either way, it’s a matter of time before someone makes a Larry Ellison Funko Pop.) Cupertino, California – 2001 was an atrocious year for the entire computer industry, with sales of hardware, software, and peripherals slipping and…
Backstories: “Tina Brown To Take Over Editorship of Asimov’s”
When New York Style Hits Science Fiction (Backstory: Originally published in the long-dead online magazine Zealot in 2001, this one was inspired by regular whinings about how science fiction magazines would somehow become massmarket attractions if they somehow got big names to edit them, as well as subscription cards for The New Yorker with “Edited By Tina Brown!” making a thick leafy mulch on the floors of magazine sections at most…
Backstories: “The Unspoken Price For Unorthodox Knowledge”
How Your Humble Narrator Knows That Savannah Monitor Urine Looks Exactly Like Crack Cocaine (Backstory: Originally published in the online newsletter The Hell’s Half-Acre Herald in 2001, this essay comes up occasionally on why I know such terrible things. In the quarter-centruy since it first saw publication, I know so, so much more. I now have a whole list of people, particularly in day jobs, who ask the same question that Laurie…
Backstories: “Information, Even If You Don’t Want It: Integrated Pest Management”
Some Pests Are More Invasive Than Others (Backstory: Since the old gallery is closed and won’t be reopening under current management, the old Texas Triffid Ranch site will be shutting down in 2026. Before that happens, there’s a matter of moving several particularly pertinent articles off the old site and over to here, just so they don’t fall down the Archive.org well. This originally ran in December 2016, and considering…
Backstories: “Leashing That Smart Mouth of Yours”
When “Youthful Indiscretions” Doesn’t Really Get To The Heart of the Matter (Backstory: Originally published in the online newsletter The Hell’s Half-Acre Herald in 2000, this is the backstory for the famed Dallas Observer article by Jef Rouner on how my life has been, er, interesting. Oh, if only I had any idea of how weird my life got after the turn of the century…) As August begins, so does school…
Backstories: “Whitley Strieber To Be Awarded Special Hugo”
For the Man Who Made “Alien Contact” Synonymous With “Rectal Probe” (Backstory: Art Bell is dead, as is AM talk radio. Trey Parker and Matt Stone just got a little over $1 billion for ten years of South Park. WorldCons are pretty much unrecognizable from where they were a quarter-century ago, and that’s a good thing. And Whitley Strieber…well, he’s still walking funny. This article, attributed to Edgar Harris, first…
Backstories: “Harlan Ellison: The Ultimate Literary Robot Warrior”
Some Inventions Are Too Ahead Of The Future (Backstory: The unit known as “Harlan Ellison” powered down for the last time in 2018. Rumors of an upgrade, reboot, or overhaul could not be confirmed at press time. This article was originally published in Revolution Science Fiction [2001-2019] in 2002 and attributed to “Edgar Harris,” shortly before I quit pro writing.) Popular attitudes in the science fiction field hold that if…
"Fly Away Home"
A Small & Scary Story “Where’s the first aid kit?” Under any other circumstances, that’s not a phrase you want to hear on a Sunday afternoon. In most households, the response to “why do you need a first aid kit?” ranges from “I was out getting in 20 miles on my bike and I hit a speedbump while going down a hill” to “I was juggling the bagel slicer with…
Backstories: "Attack of the Mad Shitter"
Maybe Not the Superhero We Want, But Definitely the Superhero We Deserve (Backstory: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Written as the dotcom crash was really gaining speed, but before any number of horrible companies used 9/11 as an excuse to let the property owner change the locks while the executives ran to Rio, we’ve had nearly a quarter-century of More of the Same, punctuated only…