'I am made from the dust of the stars, and the oceans flow in my veins: here I hide in the heart of the city, like a stranger coming out of the rain.'
An anthology, condensed from that particular brand of madness one draws from a self-induced decade-long coma: subconscious tangents and half-formed thoughts that wouldn't fit anywhere else, one notable fever-dream, and a couple of short-form poems.
Unedited, in the way of such things.
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The synopsis makes this story sound like it needs an anthology tag.
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Huh. In all my years on the site, I never actually knew that was a thing. Recent addition?
Either way, amended with thanks.
Just today I was sitting on the beach, gazing distantly at the far-off shore I can't see.
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Lake actually warm for once?
Peace is at a premium these days.
Once again, you leave me awestruck.
It is so tempting to respond to each piece and gush about how well they work; but in the interest of not creating a comment that needlessly hogs screenspace from the work itself, I'll (quite reluctantly, you must understand) restrict myself to a few most pressing highlights. The balance of time you give to each piece is perfect. You constantly hit that balance of creating something where I always want more of the story and the characters, even though I know it's said everything it wanted to say. (This goes most of all I think for "Home by the Sea" and "Coming of Age." Yes, fine, break my heart a just a little more, why don't you?) Indeed, the longer pieces--"The Tower on its Side", and most especially "MOSAIC"--are easily strong enough to have warranted publication on their own. Yet I do love how they blend into the whole and the myriad recurring themes, and how "The Tower" gets a unique breakup to its pacing that it could not have had as a single unit.
Lastly, your ever-growing skill for bringing to mind complete, tangible entities out of the tiniest snatches of unexpected detail and glimpses of character is on full display here. Yes, I'm envious. ;) This is truly more than just a collection, and I'm still a little in shock from suddenly seeing the whole thing just appear almost out of nowhere. Good grief, I loved reading this. Well done my friend!
Oh, this was potent stuff. Especially the conclusion, and extra-especially the implications of "Childe." I'm going to read the rest of the anthology, of course, but after reading part I, I had to go through the rest.
No respect for the classics. Shameful is what it is.
Most engrossing work of suspense, this one. Excellent work.
I feel like I should know the deeper meaning of this parable, and the fact that I can't put it into words is more embarrassing than anything.
Exquisite from start to finish. In some cases, I just couldn't think of anything worth saying beyond "This was really good." Thank you for it.
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Several of the chapters have felt the same way to me. I don’t quite understand what’s going on in a way that I could put into words, but I think on an emotional level I get it--it touches on something deep in the memory, although I’m not exactly sure what. Something familiar, I think, almost like something deep in the human mythos. There’s a moral, I’m sure, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is, and I ought to know.
This could be the followup to that other chapter or it might not be (I assume by the title it probably is). I’m having flashbacks to a somewhat well-known sci-fi piece that I can’t remember the name of or the author of, where the aliens came down to ‘help’ humanity be perfect, to solve all their problems . . . something cynical and dark from the 70s or 80s. Maybe Sturgeon or maybe someone else, and it’s going to bug me that I can’t remember the story. I know I’ve got it in one of my Sci-Fi anthologies, but I don’t know which one and my shelving system would make a librarian weep.
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I’ve got the same problem (for more reasons than you’d think) . . . I’m not good at literary critique, but every chapter reached me on an almost visceral level, combined in part with where I read some of ‘em--that’s not authorial intent, but that’s how it happens. And that’s how some things reach a different level, one that perhaps the author never intended. For example, and not related to this story, I’ll never hear R.E.M.’s Drive without thinking of blasting down a dirt road in my dad’s Camaro on a rainy day at just the right speed to glide over the washboarding. And this chapter will be forever locked in the lazy streams and cloudyblue wavey Lake Michigan waters, ‘cause I read it up North on vacation.
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I don’t know; I didn’t go in. This time of year, it’s probably warmer than air temperature--gotta figure the lake’s in the mid- to high-60s (whatever that is in Centigrade), and the air very much wasn’t.
The west wind blew
The foam flecks flew
The furrow followed free
There’s something magical and terrifying about the sea. I don’t have oceans, but the Great Lakes are a good stand-in.
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The sea tried to forget but the trees always remembered.
You sell yourself short. IMHO what works in the found-footage genre is the uncertainty piled atop the usual first-person story, that you don’t know until the end if they made it (a first person narration, you usually assume they did, and I can think of only one exception among stories I’ve read [and unlike my other comment, I do know what book that story is in]). That said, you have the potential pitfalls of the limited character voice and ideally the intention that the audience knows--or thinks they know--more than the protagonist.
In this case, I think you nailed it.
Also, ‘yak-fuckers’ is a great insult.
Your writing is as stylish as ever, and I'll surely have more thoughts when I get to the second and third parts of this story. Here are my thoughts so far.
I'm getting a distinct sense that there was some inspiration from Nineteen Eighty-Four. In particular, the oppressive architecture of the Tower, the protagonist's closely guarded thoughts, and the bleak cityscape are all reminiscent of it.
Some titles are so good that they make you want to drop everything and start reading right away. The Tower on its Side is, for me at least, one of those.
This is very beautiful, and in my view, some of your most poetic prose yet.
Confession time. Halfway through, part of me wondered whether the last paragraph would reveal the "End of the World" as being more than just a metaphor. In the end, I was glad this was not the case.
Thank you all for your kind words, truly -- given that it took me six months to finally push this thing to print, I'm glad so much of the prose struck home. Now that I've gotten myself where I want to be on the next story for this month (
), I can finally start responding to your thoughts properly.
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Thanks, Fan. I always look forward to reading your thoughts on these things, especially what I put out involving Celestia, Luna, or Twilight -- you seem to have your finger on the pulse of what makes a really excellent Alicorn fic, so hearing that you seem to have gotten what I was going for out of Tower is deeply reassuring.
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Alright, admission time--the reason this one ended up in the anthology rather than as a standalone work is a combination of length and the conviction that I absolutely could not put it into words in a way that wouldn't take away from the message. Or, well, I could, but it would take an entire novel to do it proper justice and that slot's already filled. I won't spoil unless asked, but suffice it to say that it's as much about the careful use of ideas as much as the things themselves--which I think we can agree does hit at the very roots of human (or indeed pony) behaviour. Glad you both liked, either way.
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Oh hey! I was hoping you'd get a chance to read this. Hopefully proof positive that I'm not DOA, and that the much-vaunted, long-awaited, alcoholism-inducing PM is indeed on its way. I suspect this one may fall a little flatter than Salarymare or Nothing, but I think there's still value to be had in it, and I'm glad the style of writing continues to do it justice.
Nineteen Eighty-Four makes for an . . . interesting point of comparison, especially with regard to the setting, but I don't want to give anything away on that front until you've had the chance to read through to the end. As per the author's endnote, there are definite parallels to those other two stories in how they handle individuality, personal agency, and choice.
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Hm. I know I've read a couple of stories that touch on similar themes (and a fair few episodes of the 90s Outer Limits would fit that mould as well), but the closest I'm getting is that old short retelling John Carpenter's The Thing from the creature's perspective.
As to MOSAIC -- eh. I'm glad it seems to have gone over well, but I'm still not convinced that I got across everything I was trying to with it. But then, given its decidedly incoherent origins, maybe it's better that way.
The Thing, but pony style?
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That would be telling.
Finally I get around to this one. And wouldn't you know it, it's right after I myself have been on a Fallout binge, so I could easily visualize the setting. But that monster--damn. It's not easy to come up with original creature designs, but here you've done it. When it made its entrance, my hair stood on end.
This, and Mortal Shell, show a knack for sophisticated horror. If there's more coming, I eagerly await it.