Tag: my writing

The Mudang’s Dance (Reprint)

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So, a few years ago, I was invited to write a piece for Arc Magazine. The result was “The Mudang’s Dance,” a piece on how accelerated modernization and social change seems to have given Korean society an interestingly different relationship with the future (and the past) from what dominates in the English-speaking world. The piece was only available in Arc 1.2… until now. It’s been reprinted in the premiere issue of Compass Cultura, a new travel webzine. See it here. (Note, it’s been a few years… which means my view has evolved somewhat since then; my view of Korea is always shifting and changing as new …

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Two Comets: H.G. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois

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I mentioned the other day that I’ve been writing a couple of short stories, just to give myself a breather on the novel I’m working on. One of those stories, the one I discussed in connection with the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival, is kind of response to two interesting “comet” SF stories I read back in 2010, and have been thinking about ever since: In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells, “The Comet” by W.E.B. Du Bois (which was collected in the first of Sheree Renée Thomas’ Dark Matter anthologies, but it’s also available in the public domain, as part Du Bois’ …

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He’s No Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but…

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I know, I’m late to the party, but lately I’ve been reading Sydney Padua’s the webcomic The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage (coming soon as a book, apparently?), and, well: Everyone loves Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and for good reason: though he was more like the Tony Stark of his age–“accomplished” barely touches how important an engineer he was during his short but influential career in early Victorian London–the Wolverine-like look he gets in Padua’s comic (and, well, in the photos, really) is, er… I’ll put it this way: as Padua has noted, he’s an extremely popular character. He even got …

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The Harlot’s Progress (BBC4) and The Georgian Underworld: A Study of Criminal Subcultures in Eighteenth-Century England by Rictor Norton

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Historical fiction–speculative or otherwise–is a challenge for a number of reasons, but probably the biggest challenge is the problem of texture: how to get the texture of that alien historical world right? This is what impressed me about China Miéville’s depiction of Bas-Lag in Perdido Street Station (a book I discussed here a decade ago): sure, as one friend commented, it reads like someone’s AD&D adventure… but the world is so utterly textured, so rife with details. It feels like a real city at some grungy, nasty moment in its history, like the festering horror-show that was London in an …

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Bluebell the Fairy’s Birthday Present

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A little break from serious posts… Late last year, I posted one chapter from the Reading Street textbook series that I cowrote with my former colleague Haeyoung Kim a few years ago. (That chapter was my second-favorite, a sort of anti-imperialist response to the kiddie portal fantasy subgenre, and a story I’m proud of, though it’s not quite the best of the bunch.) I also discussed the conscious ideological approach to writing this kids’ story, which from the beginning was simply intended for use in an English textbook. However, today I just noticed that my absolute favorite mini-story from the series, “Bluebell the …

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The Economics of Beer and Brewing in Gin-Craze London

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I’m trying to get a handle on London Brewing during the 1700s (especially during the Gin Craze), as part of the research for the novel I’m writing set at that time. What’s interesting is how English brewing transitioned from being primarily a small-scale industry, to being a large-scale industrial business with international reach, during this precise time. I found an interesting bit of information about the transition which is worth talking about: From 1748 to 1830, the transition is massive: brewing went from almost 60% smaller business, to 15% smaller business, even though the scale of production (and, presumably, demand on …

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Two More Stories of Mine Published

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So, a couple of my stories have been released into the wild… er, I mean, published in different books this month, both of which are available digitally, which means yes, you can go and buy them right now! Like, right now. (Just what you were hoping I’d say, right?) The first story is titled “The Rite,” a weird story that is about a famous ballet that caused a famous musical riot when it premiered in Paris a hundred years ago, and the pagan/magical roots of the musical content, as well as questions of the composer’s (Igor Stravinsky’s) uncertainty regarding how to …

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Toxoplasmosis of the Brain; Candidiasis of the Esophagus; Candidiasis of the Trachea; Candidiasis of the Bronchi; Candidiasis of the Lungs; Kaposi’s Sarcoma; Pneumonia; Tuberculosis; Stab Wound in the Belly; and Bus Accident

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This story appeared in the second volume of Machine of Death stories, titled This Is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death (2013). I actually got the idea for this story back when I was writing something else for Volume 1, but decided not to write it at the time because I was already knee-deep in the original story. Originally, I envisioned it as being from the point of view of a foreign aid worker, probably someone working with Médecins Sans Frontières. The story never got written, at least not for the first Machine of Death …

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Scripted… Now, About the Angle?

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The ether is off somewhere feasting on the original version of this post, which was longer than this one will be. I won’t complain about it, since this very rarely happens to me, and the software I’m using is free, but it does explain why I’m being so terse in this post. (I’m going to just recap the highlights, and be a little more vague about everything,) First of all, I just finished the first draft of my script late Wednesday night (or, if you prefer, extremely early on Thursday morning.) That puts it at six days of drafting, three …

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The Music of Jo Hyeja: Accepted, World Premiere Upcoming!

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So, I announced this news on Twitter and Facebook a little over a week ago, but didn’t get around to announcing it here. Our short film “The Music of Jo Hyeja” has been accepted for the Los Angeles HP Lovecraft Film Festival. It will be the film’s World Premiere, and as a Lovecraftian movie, it’s hard for me to imagine a better festival for it to premiere at! The website for tickets is here. I won’t be able to go, though Miss Jiwaku will be in attendance. The lineup looks interesting, as you can see from all the links from the …

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