Total Oblivion

"A fast-paced, suspenseful dystopian picaresque, part Huck Finn and part bizarro-world Swiss Family Robinson..."

---Kirkus

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Skinny Dipping

Long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and finalist for the Crawford Award. Title short story listed for the 2000 O. Henry award.

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Goblin Mercantile Exchange

Futures, Options, and Swaps (the weblog of Alan DeNiro)

kind of rooting for the animals

from Canoe and Camp Life in British Guyana, 1870s, by Charles Barrington Brown.

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Tue, July 23 2013 » Uncategorized » No Comments

…..

“To divorce fact from fantasy simply by labeling the one as ‘history’ or ‘medicine,’ and the other as ‘fiction’ is merely to create a new myth about ourselves. Life is inextricably linked with literature, and that is why there are no passports to a myth-free future.” -Gill Speak, “An Odd Kind of Melancholy: Reflections on […]

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Sun, February 14 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Sometimes Alternate History writes itself

Well, not really, but you know what I mean. “There were other plots to rescue Napoleon from captivity including one from Texas, where exiled soldiers from the Grande Armée wanted a resurrection of the Napoleonic Empire in America. There was even a plan to rescue him with a primitive submarine.”

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Sat, August 22 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Message from Walt

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Mon, March 23 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments

The Stations now on Twitter

This should be an interesting experiment. I’ve just set up a Twitter feed for my 165 page speculative poem The Stations (which is free and available as a PDF download, and has a pretty open Creative Commons license). It’s entirely possible that the poem might make more “sense” being tweeted, in passages, than a straight […]

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Sun, February 1 2009 » Poetry, Uncategorized » No Comments

The Ambitions

There is some good thinkings going on in these posts: The issue isn’t with revolution or change itself. But moving beyond the “single angry male revolutionist” or the “small cadre of brave revolutionists” model — to realize that the whole field is always changing and swirling, inevitably by itself — that the field is itself […]

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Sat, January 31 2009 » Fiction, Poetry, Uncategorized » No Comments

This is the frustration to guard against

“Those who treasure philosophical and literary works of a pessimistic, nihilistic, or defeatist nature as indispensable to their existence are hopelessly frustrated with living in a world on autopilot when they would like to switch it over to manual consciousness and nosedive humanity into a crash without survivors.” -Thomas Ligotti

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Mon, January 5 2009 » Polis, Uncategorized » 2 Comments

Twitter

So when I first started this blog more than 6 years ago, the idea of blogging seemed very strange, so I put the form through its paces with a kind of meta-blog sideshow with two fictional roomates, Evening and Quail. It was…rather strange. Oh, and there was an AI created from a VIC-20, I think […]

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Wed, December 3 2008 » Meta/Logistics, Uncategorized » 1 Comment

House Speaker Seeks Independent Bookstore Bailout Bill

WASHINGTON–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for “emergency and limited financial assistance” for the battered U.S. independent bookstore industry today, and urged the outgoing Bush administration to join legislators in reaching a quick compromise. Five days after dismal financial reports from pretty much everyone, Pelosi backed legislation to make independent bookstores eligible for help under the […]

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Thu, November 13 2008 » ?!?!?, Polis, Uncategorized » 2 Comments

12 hours

May we all exorcise the Plumberomicon and its eldritch bloviating tomorrow.

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Mon, November 3 2008 » Polis, Uncategorized » 2 Comments

The Palinomicon: Hockey Moms of Darfur

Spent. Almost devoid of speech. The “unbinding” itself must suffice. _______ HOCKEY MOMS OF DARFUR: THE UNBINDING Reaffirming, on the eve of Hockey Night in Darfur, the naming rights sold to the burning village Welcoming the janjaweed shooting free Slayer t-shirts into the crowd Commending genetically modified genocide Remaining deeply concerned by Canadian imperialism and […]

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Tue, October 14 2008 » Poetry, Polis, Uncategorized » 1 Comment

another section from the Palinomicon

The transcriptions continue apace. I have hunkered down, tried to steel myself, but the deceptively simple revelations of this list still draw consternation. Have any of these namings been enacted? Meanwhile…I almsot hear the recitations of this wicked logos throughout the land now. The anger of the minions — the followers, if you will, of […]

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Fri, October 10 2008 » Poetry, Polis, Uncategorized » 1 Comment

Olympics wrap up

This breaks down the Olympic results in an incisive way that I haven’t yet seen.

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Tue, August 26 2008 » Uncategorized » No Comments

Just in case you don’t know

or are living under a rock in the Twin Cities-Dave Schwartz is reading tonight from his new novel, Superpowers at 7pm at Dreamhaven. The book is released-go forth and attend/purchase!

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Thu, June 12 2008 » Minnesota, Uncategorized » No Comments

Total Oblivion, More or Less

All right, time for some bona fide big news. My novel, Total Oblivion, More or Less, is going to be published by Bantam! Juliet Ulman at Bantam Spectra has bought it, and I’m just really thrilled since a lot of my friends and colleagues have had great experiences with her editorial expertise. This is truly […]

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Thu, May 29 2008 » Fiction, Uncategorized » 44 Comments

not over!

Well, I think my frustration about the comment spam got the better of me (3700 comments in the queue now!) So I do think I want to blog again, at some point, but in a different venue. I would love to pull all of the poetics and philosophy and literary-advice-type posts into one wiki. But […]

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Tue, January 15 2008 » Uncategorized » No Comments

over

The spam dam broke and the hordes set up residency (1400+ in comment spam). Can’t get into the comments-destroys my browser-so in the slim chance you were posting a comment, sorry I probably won’t get to it. Anyway, that’s the spark but the fuel was there for awhile-I’m shutting the blog down. Trying to prune […]

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Thu, January 10 2008 » Uncategorized » No Comments