Usually when I create an illo...even a purely photoshopped one like this, I have a use for it in mind. But this one just grabbed me around the throat, told me what it wanted to be and instructed me to get cracking.
I recently read some reviews on Goodreads saying that Neuromancer is badly dated, has thin characters and is written in an unreadable style. I think what grates on me the most is that - to an extent, they are right. When you write near future science fiction, it will, by its nature, date quickly. Style preferences have changed considerably since the early 80s. But none of their observations struck me as particularly fair. They might react quite differently when the future he is addressing is more immediate. As in Agency .
I am not a particularly fast reader, but I did spend an unprecedented amount of time immersed in C.J. Lavigne’s debut novel, In Veritas . It is a story ostensibly about communication in which the major character, named Verity, is pretty much unable to communicate in the usual manner. The crossed-wires in her brain give her a severe case of synesthesia which lock her into her own somewhat non-sensical world and contributed strongly to making her an outcast from a very young age. – with the added complication that people have an impossible time lying in her presence. She escapes from incarceration in a mental health facility with Jacob, a wealthy young man who seems to be somewhere in the autistic spectrum. Having been cheated out of control of his family fortune, he does pretty well on the stipend he receives. Jacob and Verity live together in an affectionate - although emotionally distant and seemingly platonic - relationship where he switches career paths every five minutes ...
Unleashing My Inner Grotesque I can only speak for one grotesque really, and he is me. If you know me, you may see something of my visage in this: If you don't know me, or you simply think it's a poor likeness, you'll just have to take my word for it, this is a self-portrait. I jumped the gun declaring it done. I haven't finished my patch on the back pocket of his pants, where I'm going to sign it. I was going to do it Monday, but backed away, since my darling Laura has forbidden me from using blowtorches on Mondays because that's the day when I'm drastically resetting my body clock after working two 12 hour weekend overnight shifts. Last time I tried waxing on a Monday I set fire to the wax brush and smeared blackened, melted plastic down the arm of my mini-me. That aspect of me is less grotesque than vaguely pathetic. The black gunk clings but it's easy to get off. But I have always been aware of my inner grotesquerie. It calls itself self-pity. Self-...
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