A Condor's Quill

  One of my favorite sites is the Sci Phi Journal . Based in Belgium, the publication explores the intersection of speculative fiction and philosophy through short fiction, book reviews, essays and literary criticism. Over the years, I’ve had a number of pieces published in its pages. My latest, Executable Code: Borges and the Viral Invasion of Thought , appears in the Autumn issue (September, 2026). The essay looks specifically at how Jorge Luis Borges’ magnificent story, “Tlon, Uqbar and Orbis Tertius” (1940), anticipates the idea of  a viral computer code infecting a system and, in effect, overwriting its original programming and functions. In the story, of course, the virus is an anomalous encyclopedia entry about a place that doesn’t exist. Enjoy the essay and the rest of the great stuff to be found on the site.

  In my previous post about Pynchon’s ShadowTicket , I mentioned that the novel’s protagonist, Hicks McTaggart, was a very good dancer indeed. The deeper I get into the book, and Hick’s dancing becomes more and more prominent, I’ve begun to wonder exactly what Pynchon is up to in giving old ‘Hicksie that particular talent. Here are some brief preliminary thoughts based on my own reading as well as a few things I’ve come across elsewhere in commentary about the novel. Let’s start with the fact that McTaggart is a former strikebreaker. His body was once, not too long ago in fact, employed as a rather blunt instrument of force. It goes without saying that strikebreaking is an inherently physical business … and then some! Violence is always there, either at the forefront or lurking just beneath the surface of things. Hicks certainly has the physique for it. But, interestingly enough, when we meet him at the start of Shadow Ticket , he’s turned his back on his former profession. Hi...

  As I make my way through Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket , I’m increasingly in agreement with those who think of the novel as being in some ways a kind of prequel to Gravity’s Rainbow . (For me, the feeling first really took hold once McTaggart awoke aboard the Stupendica . The parallels to Slothrop’s journey on the Anubis abound). Pynchon’s latest is not, of course, a prequel in the usual sense. There’s no chain of characters or events, for example, leading neatly from one novel to the other. Chronologically, however, and in terms of themes, tone and even temperament, Shadow Ticket definitely feels like it takes place in a liminal zone just before the world of Gravity’s Rainbow emerges fully into being. In terms of chronology … Shadow Ticket takes place in the early 1930’s, when the forces that ultimately produce the catastrophe of WWII are beginning to mass. The events in Gravity’s Rainbow , of course, occur near the end of that process. By then, those forces – military, techn...

  I’ve just begun reading Shadow Ticket (2025), and already it is clear that the occult plays an important role in that novel’s architecture and atmosphere. It started me reflecting on that same idea in my favorite Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). The occult, the esoteric, is woven so deeply into that book that it is difficult to believe that so meticulous a writer is using it merely as decoration, as window dressing. So, what is it doing there? Here are a few thoughts. And I can’t be the first to have isolated some of these ideas: … In Gravity’s Rainbow , the occult is the natural extension or “flip side” of the paranoia that so dominates the novel. Pynchon’s characters are forever looking for patterns, meaning and connections that cannot easily be discerned. Their search, however, takes place in quicksand. The line between paranoia and discovery/revelation is highly unstable … to say the least. As he writes, paranoia may be “the leading edge … of the discovery that everyt...

  Among other things, Stanislaw Lem’s intriguing novel, Eden (1958), is about the inherent difficulty of communicating with a non-human civilization. A six-member crew crashes on a bizarre alien planet. Before the astronauts have even begun trying to understand the inhabitants of Eden, they almost immediately resort to the one form of communication that requires no translation or explanation: the universal Rosetta Stone … violence. The explorers’ first encounters with the planet are characterized by destruction. The spacecraft itself crashes. The crew’s almost Pavlovian response to their unfamiliar environment is not curiosity but fear, suspicion and, quickly after that, force. Their first move is to arm themselves. Then, when inevitably confronted by that which they cannot understand – and which they cannot fit neatly into human conceptual constructs – their first instinct is to attack. Violence becomes, in effect, the first language on Eden. The men have no idea what the s...

  On the surface of things, Don Quixote appears to be planted firmly in the realm of literary realism rather than that of speculative fiction. It is a work grounded in dusty roads, inns mistaken for castles, windmills perceived as giants and the ephemera and gritty social reality of everyday life in early 17 th -century Spain. Dig a little deeper, however, and one discovers something far stranger and even more remarkable: a prolonged meditation on the instability of reality itself. Through the protagonist’s unswerving belief in a world that does not quite exist, the novel explores a question that would become central to the genre of speculative fiction centuries later: What happens when reality becomes negotiable, a matter of opinion? In attempting to understand how Don Quixote anticipates speculative fiction, it’s probably best to hazard a definition of that genre. Speculative fiction – in all of its myriad forms – encompasses narratives that depart from what has come to be ca...

  Endangered by James C. Clar © 2026 “We’ve received reports from three separate countries,” Fish & Wildlife Special Agent McNair said. “Indonesia, Mexico and right here in the good old US of A. Funny thing. You’re named in each of them.” I said nothing. A floor fan somewhere off to my right oscillated slowly. It accomplished little more than to circulate the smell of burnt coffee and old cigarette smoke in the hot confines of the tiny interview room. He opened the file on the battered desk between us. “Let’s start with the Sumatran tiger .” “That was, maybe, my best.” “You admit shooting it?” “Yes, of course. Why deny it? I caught it as it glided silently through the jungle. It flashed orange, yellow and black against all that green.” I paused for a moment, savoring the memory. “I was downwind, of course. It never got so much as a whiff.” “You’re describing a deliberate kill,” McNair responded with an astonished tone. “No. I’m simply describing a shot.” He l...

  I picked up a copy of Don DeLillo’s fascinating novel, Libra , at the Friends of The Library of Hawaii gigantic used book sale. (How I missed this when it came out in 1988 is a mystery). Twice through the text, now, a number of things have piqued my interest. … The Elements of Tragedy  (I use the terms "tragic" and "tragedy" here in less than the classical sense. There's nothing noble about Oswald. Still, I think the words are apt.) At the top of my list is the degree to which DeLillo portrays Lee Harvey Oswald as a quintessentially tragic figure. This may very well be the novel’s greatest achievement … as well as its most disturbing. DeLillo does not excuse Oswald. Nor does he sentimentalize him or turn him into a misunderstood anti-hero. He presents him as a painfully ordinary human being; a human being who is needy, confused, alienated, resentful and one who is desperate to matter. Oswald wants to be somebody. Hence his need for recognition. He wants ...

I just finished Stanislaw Lem’s novel, The Invincible (1964) and thought it might be interesting to compare it briefly to his better-known Solaris (1961). This is not a book review. Nor is it an academic essay. What follows are simply some (hopefully) coherent thoughts on the nature of – and the relationship between – the two works … On one level, the two books have much in common. Both begin with human beings encountering an alien intelligence that they are ultimately unable to fathom. In both texts, Lem is interested in the limitations of the human mind; particularly in the perils of anthropomorphism. Humans have a tendency to interpret the unknown in terms that are familiar. That tendency is, however, often an impediment to genuine understanding. In Solaris , the alien in question is actually the titular planet’s living ocean; an intelligence so radically different than anything human beings have ever encountered that a century of scientific study and exploration has produced litt...