Happy Holidays!

As a special treat I'm pleased to report that the always-great Cecilia Tan (of the always-fantastic Circlet Press) just featured my erotic holiday story, "When the Giving Got Good" on the Circlet site. Enjoy!

A Special Preview -

I'm extremely pleased to be able to report that my very first collection, Dirty Words, is going to be reprinted by the very cool folks at Lethe Press. Here's a preview of the cover of the new edition. Stay tuned for more info ....

Pauline Likes "Moving"

My sweet pal, Pauline, just sent me this lovely little review of my story, "Moving" (one of the stories for sale through Logical-Lust). Thanks!

A sultry tale of dominance and submission through bondage, from the delectable pen of M.Christian.

We are lured into the dark world of Syvia's dungeon seductively, as through Christian's protagonist we experience the fulfilment and relief of total obedience to a patient, yet wilfull mistress.

There are no bonds here, just a promise. No whips, no chains; no manacles whips or restraints. No pain. The subject is simply forbidden to move.

It's a journey of self awareness, understanding, learning and resistance.

He's exposed, naked. He can blink; he can breathe and that's it.

It's a gentle story of humility and the freedom of relinquishing control told in M.Christian's beautiful prose.

An exquisite story.

Awwwww ....

Thanks so much, Remittance Girl, for this very special review of "Hack Work," which is part of Logical-Lust's release of some of my short stories. HUGS!

I'll be honest, this is only the second time I've bought an e-book or e-story, which is silly, really, considering I'm stuck in a country with no proper bookstores. I think I've been suffering from the same, stupid prejudice as many people - if it's not on paper, it can't be any good. If you feel this way, then the sooner you rid yourself of the prejudice the better, because otherwise, you're missing a lot of good writing.

I just purchased, downloaded and devoured M. Christian's Hack Work, from the Logical Lust site. No one asked me to review it, so I have no idea if he'll thank me for this or not.

Hack Work is a short work of speculative fiction set in the city of New Orleans in an unspecified future. The main character, Moss, is a woman who hires out her body to "fares" who pay to have experiences through her - using her like a remote sensing device. Although she's been at her job for some time, the client who hires her on this occasion, prompts her to question her assumptions of complicity, accountability, and confronts her with her own reactions as a "puppet" in the process.

As with all M. Christian's work, it is exceptionally well written: spare where it needs to be and lushly original where it matters. He pulls you down into the humid, forsaken city expertly. His "taxi" girl is elegantly introduced through beautifully economical language. It's rare to find a short story writer who does this so proficiently, especially because having a good sense of who this woman is is integral to the story. It is her identity, her agency, or the lack of it, that sits at the crux of the tale.

Hack Work has both the elements I consider essential to good erotic fiction: sexual heat, of course, but also moral ambiguity. It touches tantalizingly on universal issues of free will and responsibility. The main character approaches and withdraws from her own involvement in the acts her "client" demands that she perform, and - rather intelligently, I felt - she leaves us without having reached any firm conclusions.

The title itself is a challenge. It brings up images of writer as "hack" and the old word for the driver of a Hackney Cab. It sews them together again, reminding us of how writing is a guided, mediated experience for the reader, and something akin to channeling a voodoo god, for the writer.

Beyond the enjoyment of the story itself, Hack Work stands as an excellent example of how to do intelligent, erotic, short fiction right.

Hack Work, by M. Christian, can be purchased HERE

Lisabet Sarai Likes BRUSHES and PAINTED DOLL

I'm very jazzed -- and very flattered -- that Lisabet Sarai has a review of both Brushes and Painted Doll up on the Erotica Readers and Writers site. Here's a taste (and here's the rest of it):

Prolific erotica writer M.Christian has been described more than once as a literary chameleon, and with good reason. Although he is straight and male, Christian has published single-author collections of both gay (Filthy) and lesbian (Speaking Parts) erotica. His books include a scifi erotica story collection (The Bachelor Machine), gay vampire thrillers (Running on Empty and The Very Bloody Marys) and the peculiar Me 2, which has been praised as insightful social criticism and panned as a poor-taste publicity stunt.

I was flattered when he wrote me asking if I’d give him press quotes for not one, but two books that he had coming out soon. Flattered, and jealous, given my own glacial rate of publication. Sure, I told him, but I’ve got to read the books first. Within half an hour, I received digital Advanced Reader Copies of Brushes and The Painted Doll.

If I didn’t know that these two books had been written by the same author, it would be difficult to tell. Brushes is a fascinating literary exercise, a novella in which each chapter presents the perspective of a different character. The various narrators are linked by their connections, casual or intimate, with Escobar, a fabulously popular painter hailed as an artistic genius. Escobar is hardly a person for these characters. He is a mirror, a distorted reflection highlighting their failings, magnifying their inadequacies. His sexual charisma, his incandescent talent, his elusive insight into the souls of his subjects, all are legendary. Everyone craves his attention. Everyone envies his success ....

[MORE]

Bite Sized M.Christian!

Logical-Lust is proud to announce the release of six special-edition short stories from the celebrated author M.Christian!

These six quick-read stories offer something about anything for anyone -- gay, straight, lesbian, BDSM ... you name it - including stories that have never been previously released or published!

"MOVING" - Straight BDSM erotica
In Sylvia’s dungeon, when you’re told not to move you’d better not ...
$2.00

"TWO MEN IN A BOAT/ON THE SCREEN" - Includes gay erotica
Two steamy tales, of two quite different types of passion!
$1.75

"HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD" - Gay erotica
Sometimes meeting your big screen hero doesn’t end quite the way you wish ...
$2.00

"HACK WORK" - Speculative, futuristic, straight erotica
In the future, we may use others remotely for our own pleasures, but what of the one ‘taking the ride?’
$2.00

"SUNLIGHT" & "HER MASTER'S VOICE" - Includes gay and BDSM erotica
Another two scintillating tales of sensuality, both quite different.
$1.75

"A LIGHT MINUTE" - Lesbian erotica
Online, Sasha has breath-taking control over Alyx. How far will she take her?
$2.00

These special edition erotic stories are available as PDF, Mobipocket/Kindle/PDA, WORD, TEXT (with Microsoft Reader & HTML coming soon!).

M.Christian is an acknowledged master of erotica with more than 300 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many, many other anthologies, magazines, and Web sites. He is the editor of 20 anthologies including the Best S/M Erotica series, The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, and others. He is the author of the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, and Filthy; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Brushes, and Painted Doll.

M. Christian is the chameleon of modern erotica. One day punk, another romantic; one day straight, another totally perverse and polyamorous. But always sexy and and gripping.
- Maxim Jakubowksi, editor of the Mammoth Book of Erotica series

M. Christian is to erotica what Swarovski crystals are to Liberace: essential.
- Clint Catalyst, author of Cottonmouth Kisses

M. Christian's stories are the fairy tales whispered to one another by dark angels whose hearts and mouths are brimming with lust. He goes beyond the pale, ordinary definitions of sexuality and writes about need and desire in their purest forms. Readers daring enough to stray from the safety of the path will find in his images and words a garden of delights to tempt even the most demanding pleasure-seeker.
-- Michael Thomas Ford, Lambda Literary Award winner and editor

For more information check out:

Logical-Lust
M.Christian

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Here we go again, folks: another fun article for the always-great Dark Roasted Blend. This time it's about some amazing doll houses. Enjoy!

Some things are amazing because of their size. Others, no less amazing because of their lack of it.

Doll House enthusiasts usually trace the origins of their fascination to European “baby houses” of the 1700s, though kids were kept far, far away from these elegant treasures; they were more a status symbol than a real plaything.

If you want to use a broader description, though, miniatures more suited for children to play with arguably have roots as far back as the ancient Egyptians, if not further.

True doll houses, mixing elegant miniaturization but still letting the kids play with them, really began to come into their own with the industrial age, around the turn of the 20th century. The finest makers of houses, and naturally the furniture to go in them, were usually German (before the first world war) and then the British and Americans (afterwards). Dolls and their houses existed before machines took the place of skilled craftsmen of course, but only rich kids could get them -- and then only played with them very, very carefully.

Some of the kids who enjoyed them grew up and transformed their childhood fun into a seriously wonderful hobby, if not magnificent art.

One of the more celebrated doll houses lives in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Created by legendary silent picture actress Colleen Moore with the set designer Harold Grieve, the fairy castle is a magnificent work of art as well deliriously scaled precision. Towering more than eight feet tall, the house features murals painted by someone you may have heard of (Walt Disney), chandeliers with real diamonds, the tiniest Bible ever written, tapestries featuring the smallest recorded stitches, a library of more than 100 hand-printed books, a pure silver bathtub (with running water), and still more amazing treasures and exquisite details.

Being a screen queen gave Colleen Moore an opportunity to create a magnificent fantasy castle, but if you want true opulence in small scale you have to … well, let’s just say it’s good to be the queen.

Created in 1924, Queen Mary’s doll house has a pedigree worthy of any stately home in England; the queen’s cousin, Princess Marie Louise, commissioned the famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens to construct it.

But the Queen’s dollhouse was more than a plaything. It was, and still is, a frozen moment in British history, a miniature collection of the pride of the empire with works and features showcasing the best the country had to offer. Like Colleen Moore’s castle, the library had an extensive collection of handwritten books, but because she was the queen, after all, the royal doll house’s library had unique works by Kipling and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


Moore’s house had running water, but the queen’s house not only had that but a flushable loo, too. And that’s not all: the floors were done in fine woods and marble, the kitchen sported a working coffee mill, and even the wine cellar featured bottles containing real wines (and not just the cheap stuff, either). Many of the rooms were also mirror copies of rooms in Buckingham Palace, which is where the Queen’s doll house resides.

There are simply far too many curiosities and small-scale wonders to talk about in one article – from immaculate working steam trains and gasoline-powered racing cars. Nevertheless, I want to close with a fun little oddity: the biggest of the smallest.

Sure, some might argue about its standing as the biggest/smallest but you have to admit that the model of Shanghai in that city’s Urban Planning Museum is magnificent and, despite it’s scale, simply staggering.

A three-dimensional depiction of what the city might look like in 2020, the model fills a vast room bigger than 1,000 square feet in size. What gives you a headache about this incredibly detailed model is that, yes, the model is huge, but only because it’s a scaled reduction of the city itself: the largest model of what will be the largest city ever to exist on the planet.

Makes you feel small, doesn’t it?

NEW Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker: To Blog Or Not To Blog

(the following is part of an ongoing series of columns I'm doing for The Erotica Readers & Writers Association on the ins and outs and ins and outs and ins and outs of writing good smut)


Should you blog? Yes.

What, you want reasons? (sigh) Okay, here are a few good reasons why you should immediately –- or close to -– start your own blog and what you should put in it.

First of all, as I said last month, everything’s changed, especially in the writing world. Understand that these days, in this new world, anyone can be a writer, which is the good news as well as the bad news.

While publicity and exposure have never been things a writer could ignore, or did so at their peril, they’ve now become absolutely essential. You have to find some way –- any way –- of standing out from a growing throng of people who are also yelling at the top of their literary lungs for the attention of editors, publishers, or even readers.

Blogging is a great way to do just that: it’s free, easy, fun, and a good way to show off your work and build an audience. Frankly, there isn’t a reason not to blog, aside from the seduction of spending too much time on it, thereby keeping you from what’s really important, which is your fiction writing.

Two things to think about before you start: one, decide on a program or platform. Some people like Wordpress but many (like me) don’t like the HTML headaches. Others (like me) prefer Blogger since it’s amazingly easy to set up and use, and also features a lot of cool features that Wordpress does not.

Two, you have to decide what your blog’s about. It’s tempting to make it a personal thing, a site to show off your writing. Although that approach is fine and good, those types of blogs can (at best) sometimes be a bit dull or (at worst) make a writer feel obligated to constantly post new content. I recommend either a blog mixed with a hobby as well as your writing, or two separate sites, one for your writing that you don’t update a lot and one you post a lot of fun stuff to. Say, for instance, that you like food. Then do a sex and food blog that mixes your work with food-related stuff. (Donna George Storey does this well with her Sex, Food, and Writing blog.) Or you could do sex and movies, sex and travel, sex and … well it’s really up to you.
Just do what you feel comfortable doing because that's the only way you'll continue to blog.

Personal experience time! I’m not an expert but I’ve had a lot of fun with my own blogs –- and they seem to be going fairly well. I've created three separate blogs:

• www.mchristian.com is a site where I post my writing stuff (reviews, stories, essays like the one you’re reading right now, book announcements, and such)
• Meine Kleine Fabrik (http://meinekleinefabrik.blogspot.com) is the site my brother and I started to share the fun and weird stuff we’ve collected over the years or just stumbled across
• Frequently Felt (http://frequentlyfelt.blogspot.com) is where I post funny and strange sex stuff as well as work by writers who I’ve either contacted or who have sent me great things to post (and you can do the same -- just write me).

I recommend posting at least once a day, and consistently; people forget very quickly about dead or slow sites. You have to keep things flowing to keep people interested and reading. Once a day works for me, as I can post to all three blogs in about half an hour, which leaves me a lot of time to work on my fiction writing. I also cheat a bit in that I rarely write fresh content for my blogs, preferring to repost older material instead of spending precious time writing new stuff. I'm fortunate to have archives bursting with material, but I realize not everybody will be in a similar position. Basically, do what you can to prevent the blog from sucking time away from your "real" writing!

There are lots of sites out there with hints and techniques for running a successful blog so I won’t go into much detail about that topic here (besides, as I said, it’s all new and changing anyway). Here’s a quick rundown of things to remember, though, when you’re blogging.

One of the biggest, and most confusing, things about running a blog is posting content that isn’t your own. Technically, and legally, you should always get permission from the original source but that’s too often a huge headache and/or impossible. This is where what you should do (legally) and what most people go (realistically) part ways. Since I always try to be a law-abiding citizen … stop laughing … I must advise you to follow established procedure. There’s lots of sites out there that can help you with your copyright questions. Check out the U.S. Copyright Office's list of resource links for more information. I feel Creative Commons offers some of the best (and simplest) solutions and resources to make this topic less confusing.

Beyond the fun of figuring out what’s legal, a common mistake bloggers make is not putting an email address on their site(s). Yes you’ll get spammed (we all do) but what’s worse: spam or not hearing from some editor, publisher, or reader? I’ve tried to reach out to many writers only to find no way of reaching them on their site –- and so they’ve lost an opportunity. These days writers can’t afford to lose any possible gig or connection.

It’s also important to play with gadgets and gizmos. Blogger has all kinds of cool modules you can add to your site: video clips, sound clips, RSS readers, you name it. People expect multimedia these days—pages and pages of text is a kiss of death for blogs.

Checking out other blogs and sites is essential. There’s nothing wrong with learning from other’s successes and doing to your own site what they’ve done to theirs. As long as your content is different, no harm done. And the afore-mentioned gadgets and modules make it very easy to add or subtract features. Just experiment and see what works, or doesn’t, for you.

I could go on (and I will in future columns) but this should at least give you a start. Think about what you want to do with your blog, settle on a focus you can play with for a long time, and then set it up. Once it’s done and you feel good about sticking with it, then you can begin to reach out. Again, more on that very soon.

But in the meantime always remember that blogs are like writing and life itself: if it’s not fun, if you’re not enjoying yourself, then you’re doing something wrong. So have yourself a blast with this great exposure and publicity tool –- and blog away!

I May Be An Atheist -

- but this commercial for Bjorn Borg’s new dating service choked me up. Lovely!

Irony: an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected ....

My feelings for Anne Coulter aren't exactly private so my glee at her ironic misfortune shouldn't exactly be a surprise to anyone:

From The New York Post:

THAT although we didn't think it would be possible to silence Ann Coulter, the leggy reaction- ary broke her jaw and the mouth that roared has been wired shut . . .

Confessions of a Literary Streetwalker: Dirty Words

(the following is part of an ongoing series of columns I did for The Erotica Readers & Writers Association on the ins and outs and ins and outs and ins and outs of writing good smut)


Before I get into this month’s column, I want to impart some hearty gratitude toward those who took the time to write about last month's column. I'm glad I inspired debate concerning the risks we all might face in electing to launch into a career that explores the literary limits of sexuality.

If any of you have any thoughts on the matter, or want to suggest future topics I might address, please do not hesitate to write me (zobop@aol.com).

This month's Streetwalker comes from part of an email I received from "Jill" (thanks!) who wrote about words we might have to teach our spellcheckers. This immediately reminded me of a little piece I wrote a long time ago -- "How Much?" -- about living the life of an pornographer: "My spellchecker has grown unwieldy from the words I have stuffed in its tight, resistant, pulsing, memory: cocksucker, cunt, mons, asshole, pubes, motherfucker, felch, testicles, dildo, lube, S/M, she-male, latex, faery, jerk-off, cunnilingus, fellatio, flagellation, flogger, Saran Wrap, cunt-licker, assfucker, and on and on and on, etc., etc. I ran it over a letter to my landlord and 'broken mail slot' became 'she-male slut.' Now he looks at me funny and the damned thing never got fixed."

Aside from making me chuckle at my own cleverness, I do have a point: very few genres have their writers picking and choosing -- often very carefully -- what words they can, should, or must never use. In erotica, word choice basically comes down to two questions: what's appropriate to the story, and how important is it to work around limitations.

Believe it or not, certain editors and publishers have a verboten word list that includes certain slang terms or spellings. The question of whether to argue with them isn't an ethical one -- at least not completely. Your preference for "cum" rather than "come" or your use of "pussy" when the editor doesn’t favor it isn't really the question. Your main dilemma is simply this: how much you want to see your work in print? Editors will insist you take it out or publishers will often change the word without your permission, so really, how attached are you to these words?

For the record, I believe an anthology should be consistent in its spelling -- so while I respect a writer's preference for "come" instead of "cum" I don't blink, or blink that much, when my publisher suggests a change so the word is the same in every story. In the second instance, if an editor or publisher simply doesn't like a word ... well, I suggest the editor go into therapy, and that the rest if us simply try not to sweat it when they take the word out. And we can always just not work with them in the future.

Now appropriate word choice, that's another matter. Certain words either aren't correct or don't feel correct in the context of a story. The problem could be historical, for example the word "sex" as a term for female genitalia is tolerable (barely) when you're doing a historical piece but when your character is a Gen-X, Y, or Z person, how appropriate is it? It might be technically correct but “sex” is often used as a ‘safe’ way of describing what’s between a woman’s thighs. My own rule is to use terms that feel right for the character. If someone is depicted as repressed, using words like "cunt" or "twat" is jarring. Same for an older man using clumsy slang for his own genitals, like "member."

I applaud people for doing research, by the way. Nothing adds a flavor of realism more than slipping in a good word choice for sex or the active biology of sex. One of my own favorites is a 19th century term for female genitalia, "Old Hat," because it was 'frequently felt." Yes, you may wince. I certainly did.

While I'm on the subject of vocabulary, I should repeat myself a bit and talk about ... well, repeating yourself. I know what many writing books say to avoid a small vocabulary, to use instead many unique terms instead of the same word over and over again. Sound advice, except when it comes to pornography: penis in the first paragraph, then a cock in the second, pole in the third, shaft in the forth, member in the fifth, lamppost in the sixth ... get where this is going? For smut, using just one, or maybe two, words for the same thing is fine -- better than a spiraling descent of ridiculous metaphors and more and more obscure terms.

Back to history. One thing I like to see in a story has little to do with the words of sex and more to do with the view of sex. Assuming that characters in a story set in Nero’s Rome view sex the same way we do today can result in some clumsy word usage. Certain "types" of sex were rare or seen with disfavor – such as in the case of Rome, where noticing or even admiring women's breasts in a sexual context was a sign of weakness. Just look at the Pompeii mosaics; the prostitutes depicted -- no matter what they were doing -- kept their boobies wrapped. Therefore, you wouldn’t want to spend too much time waxing poetic on some Roman woman’s tits if your story was set in that time period.

The bottom line is that certain words and ideas work and others don't. The trick to picking the right ones has little to do with the power of them at this moment or your own personal preference as it does with their relevance within the story. "Naughty" words shouldn't be ones that reach the modern libido but instead be used to continue to keep the reader within and enjoying the story. Because when you get down to it, an erotic story isn't about the words but rather what you are saying with them.

Dark Roasted Science Fiction: The Computer Connection

Here's a new classic science fiction review, this time for Alfred Bester's wonderful The Computer Connection.


This is a toughie - not because this isn’t a great book, or that it’s hard to define - but because it’s one of my all-time favorites. You know: ‘stuck on a desert island with only three books’ kind of favorite. That’s the tough, you see - I know why it’s a great book, the trick is trying to find a way to tell you, out there, how good it really is.

So ... let’s start with the basics: Alfred Bester, the legend. Winner of the first Hugo for "The Demolished Man", established Grand Master of SF with such ground breakers as "Fondly Fahrenheit", "The Stars My Destination", and - later - with "The Deceivers" and (you either loved it or hated it) "Golem 100". Bester is also a legend in the radio and comic world, having worked on scripts for Charley Chan, The Shadow, Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern - in fact the Lantern Oath ("In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight, let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power, Green Lantern’s light") is Bester’s. Alfred was the original writer’s writer: he wrote for everyone, everywhere - but it’s his SF that he’s most known for.

For the longest time, the only place you could find Bester’s stuff was in the dusty halls of used book shops. Now you can pick up some of his best: "The Demolished Man", "The Stars My Destination", "Virtual Unrealities" (a collection of his marvelous short stories), "The Computer Connection", and even the book he left unfinished (and Roger Zelazny completed), "Psychoshop".

Even though his books are available it’s still sad that people don’t know Bester. Sigh. It’s especially disappointing when I hear people praise the stylistic endeavors of certain popular SF writers - when Bester blew them all away decades ago. As Harlan Ellison correctly states in his introduction to the "Computer Connection": “Bester was the mountain, all the rest of us merely climbers toward that peak.”

So what is it about Bester that just absolutely delights me? Well, man, you just have to be in the groove, capiche? You gotta plug in and ride the crazyhouse currents. Y? Y! Reading a Bester book is a trip, a stroboscopic madhouse of ideas, brilliant concepts, delightful characters, crackling language, and just plain fun. Now I don’t mean the kind of empty-headed fun you get nowadays - no, Bester’s fun is multi-language word play, obscure (but still understandable) references, and absolutely incredible, mind-boggling inventiveness.

Take, for example, "The Computer Connection" (also called "Extro" or "The Indian Giver"). In one blistering romp we have immortality, time-travel, cyberpunk (long before Gibson was born or computers got personal), cloning, an Amerinds nation in the toxic dump that was Lake Erie, characters like the nymphet Fee-5 Graumans Chinese (so named because she was born in the fifth row of the theater and is kinda of snotty about it), Dr. Sequoya Guess, a trip to Titan, a merging of man and computer, and, and, and ... overload!

Our hero is one Ned Curzon; a delightful fellow who’d been transformed into an immortal through an strange accident involving the explosive destruction of Krakatoa, and a member of an extended family of same eternal and eccentric folks: Nemo, Herb Wells, The Syndicate, Hillel the Jew, Borgia, Jacy (yes, that J.C.), Sam Pepys (not their realsies, you understand, just their ‘nom de years’). Ned, it seems, has been nicknamed Guigol (Guig for short), for his attempts to indoctrinate other people into their unique group. The problem, you see, is that to become immortal you have to go through a lot of terror and pain - and a lot of folks just don’t make it. Guigol as in Grand Guigol.

Then, right out of left field, the Group has a new member, the brilliant Amerid scientist Dr. Sequoya Guess - but an unforeseen side effect slipped into the immortality process as well, a side effect that has linked Guess to the Extro, the planet-wide system of intelligent machines and has given him incredible abilities and a lethal intent towards Guig and the members of his delightful group. As the back cover puts it: so how do you kill an immortal?

Stop, wait - I’ve sinned: you can’t describe a Bester book like you’d give a pitch for a block-buster flick. His ideas are mercurial: slippery and brilliant. Each page - no, each paragraph - sparkles with insane wit and crackling imagination. Now that trick - pyrokinetic writing - isn’t all that hard, but the miracle is that when Bester does this he also makes you care for these people. When characters get hurt, die, you might have only known them for a few lines, a few pages but - damnit - you feel the tears start. You really want to know these people, this glorious family of immortals and the various other folks that dance and cavort in any of Bester’s books. Bester was never a ‘hard’ SF writer - his science is as slippery and quick as his style - but then you don’t read his books to see if he crossed all his t’s or dotted his i’s ... no, you read Bester to take a wondrous trip, to be told a story by one of the few true masters of science fiction, of modern literature.

Well, I tried folks - tried my ever-lovin’ darnedest to pin down the beautiful brilliance of Alfred Bester. I gave it my best shot, trying to capsulize the effervescent, freeze-frame lightning. I guess there’s only one way to find out if I succeeded or not: go out - now - and pick up a copy of any of his books and see. It’s more than worth it.