I recently encountered two artifacts. One was scary, the other wasn’t. The first was Pulse, a Japanese horror film I’d rented thinking it was science fiction. The plot involved ghosts who were using the Internet to communicate, to creep people out, and eventually to transform them into more ghosts. It was basically Ringu, with the […]

Stand by for a purely commercial announcement. Which isn’t surprising, considering that this blog is (in its own rambling, inept way) all about self-promotion. What should cause jaws all over the world to drop to the floor is that I’m about to use this space to promote someone else. Daniel Abraham’s new novel, A Shadow […]

My autumn rural idyll continues. Last weekend we visited the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, which is open to the public only one day per year. Sevilleta was formerly the enormous Campbell Ranch, which was deeded over thirty years ago to the Nature Conservancy, which in turn gave it to the government, with many restrictions on […]

Elif Shafak has been acquitted of “insulting Turkishness” in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul. The judge took all of 90 minutes to dismiss the charges as baseless. Shafak did not bother to attend the trial, as she was giving birth in California at the time. Go, her. Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot […]