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In his amazingly good sci-fi novel, The Peripheral, William Gibson describes a environmental cataclysm called The Jackpot. The name is perfect, in that it evokes not a single-cause catastrophe but rather a horrific alignment (like the diamonds on a slot machine) of multiple ones. Global heating. Drought. Pollution. Pandemics. Poverty. Et cetera. But, as is…
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When I was in college in the 80s, there was only one dance club in town that didn’t play the usual top 40 pop music. It was a little joint called My Friend’s Place, and it wasn’t actually in town, but rather out in the county between Gainesville and Hawthorn. We called it MFP, and…
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I find it ironic that, here in America, we have only two socially acceptable ways to identify ourselves with regard to religion: you’re either a believer, or an atheist. Yeah, this is crazy. For all kinds of reasons. We all know that the first category—believer—really describes a vast spectrum of religious faith, from rigid practitioners…
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I love Stephen King. I watch his interviews and lectures on YouTube, and I re-read his book, On Writing, once or twice a year, finding it one of the best meditations on the craft around, not to mention a very fine memoir. I follow him on Twitter (er…X), and you should, too (he’s @StephenKing, if…
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(Author’s Note: The recent tragedy in Maui got me thinking about one of my favorite novels of the past twenty years, The Descendants, which is set nearby. I am reposting this essay about it as a kind of semi-tribute.) Even though I fancy myself a literary fiction writer (even when I’m writing detective or sci-fi…
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Down here in Florida, we know a thing or two about hurricane preparation. So, for all my friends out on the west coast about to face down their first-ever hurricane, I thought I’d offer my personal short list of things to do and have on-hand before the storm hits. Good luck!
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I started binge-reading science fiction when I was in 8th grade. That was the year that the local school board rezoned the kids from my White, suburban neighborhood to attend the largely Black, urban middle school, Lincoln, across town. This was a miraculous development for me because I had already attended Lincoln (back when my…
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Okay, this one is kind of a no-brainer. Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes contains one of the most iconic guitar riffs since The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction. (And, as with that song, the riff supposedly came to the artist, Jack White, in a dream). Yeah, it’s got a great riff, but I mainly like…
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(Yes, We Should Blast Moon Dust into Outer Space to Cool the Earth) Recently I was enjoying a long-distance phone chat with an old friend of mine, and the conversation turned, as it inevitably does, to the weather. She lives in Ohio, I live in Florida, and yet our answers to our respective inquiries about…
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Fifteen years ago I read Mark Harris’s excellent non-fiction book Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood. It recounts five movies that came out in 1968, a kind of annus mirabilis of American film, a pivot point in both cinema and culture when Hollywood reinvented itself for the better. I…
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Ash Clifton, Writer 