DREAD Reviews 10
Dad Reads and Examines Authors while Distracted
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Do you ever wonder where you are or where you’re going? Well…
You can choose a new direction for your feet, just be aware of a few things:
Standing still, you rotate around the center of of the earth at almost half a kilometer per second.
Our planet moves 29.78 kilometers per second around the sun.
Our sun orbits the galactic core at approximately 230 kilometers per second.
Our Milky Way Galaxy - as part of the Local Group, which is in the Virgo Cluster, itself a lobe of the Lanaikea Supercluster, which is subordinate to the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, one of many thin strands of the galactic filament - is moving towards the mysterious Great Attractor at approximately 600 kilometers per second.
I just thought you should know that piddling around on earth won’t really change your direction too much. To make a slight dent in your predestined journey requires the use of a rocket ship.
If you’re lucky and rich maybe you can lead a team of engineers and scientists to develop new technologies which launch you out of our solar system at a speed 50% faster than mankind’s current record (the Parker probe). You can never go back to where you’ve been, but as long as you’re willing to suffer the inconvenience of dying stranded in deep space, maybe you can stand still for a moment. Watch the universe speed by (don’t forget a telescope or it will be hard to look at).
Then, years later, scientists will find the universe is moving towards/away from some other as yet undiscovered reference point. It will turn out you wasted your time trying.
This is every Gen-Z boy’s dream come true. Not only did you meet your girlfriend online from the safe isolation of your home, you now get to go risk your life to save your crush. Her being a robot is just the cherry on top:
Your husband could have cleaned the garage and become a millionaire by now. Instead, he spends his evenings playing Call of Duty:
I read this and boy did the time fly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late:
As a fellow historian I can always tell when someone knows their stuff. Good historians are sober, nuanced people, but great historians sound like optimistic conspiracy theorists who just discovered caffeine. The latter often describe the USA the same way I see it - a used car salesman with a nuke (he cosplays as a Roman after work). This is meant in grudgingly admiring kind of way; he’s really great salesman, and his cosplaying is on point… Yeah, don’t put too much thought into it, because I didn’t:
If you pinch your nose, serving rotting heads to zombie customers is just like working at Starbucks:
This depressing tale is about love, fate, and the third law of thermodynamics. No matter how hard you try to hold onto something good, fate says: “Gone now, because screw you!”
Don’t worry about this, because then the third law comes in and says “Time? Fate? Cute concepts, but I’m the real closer.”
Once the temperature drops, thermodynamics doesn’t care about your plans or your destiny. Entropy’s hitting its minimum state and that’s the end of the story. Not even a closed system surrounded by a vacuum is safe. Black body radiation will slowly wither all of it to nothing. No trains, no directions, just stillness:
Dystopia and… intentional slapstick? This character lives in a world so hellish his most valuable possession is a bag of old flags (I’m already laughing). Sustained by the mission of convincing “The board” of its value (oh man, the description of this board…), we navigate this world employing the most proper of metrics: by imagining it to be a cinnamon roll (a square one).
Herman, our untrustworthy ally, has a daughter who dances to a tune in our head. Conjoined twins, the model of sin, scavenge the streets. We sleep in closets. We open our mouths as if to scream, then say conversationally: “Don’t.” We visit our friend through the fire escape.
I don’t think I need to say more to convince you to read this:
I’m a total sucker for anyone who ruminates on star formation, the emergence of sentience, galactic travel, the interactions of alien civilizations, or what Earth will look like in hundreds or thousands of years. It hardly matters what form this speculation takes, I mean it when I say I’m a complete and utter sucker for this kind of thing.
You’ll get a little sample of all of that in this short piece:
Another genius online service giving the people what they really want! You’ll hate this guy and be in the moral, if not logical, right. Instead of reflecting on the truth of human nature, we as a species must continue shooting the messengers (or in this case the tech entrepreneur). Not for the faint of heart:
I enjoyed this thought-provoking article. I disagree with nothing in particular presented. However, I’m not too worried about it's pessimistic outlook - every generation since the dawn of time feels certain that the past was greater and the future looks grim and empty of meaning or art.
The specific reasons given for this change a little bit every decade but a few remain constant. Consider this - has a very old person ever held you in a stunlock chatting about utter nonsense like the weather, Jon the youngster's jogging routine, or “Watch those kids while you can, them darn youngins grow up so fast”? Extra points if they guess your child's sex incorrectly and are unable to hear your repeated corrections (any parent knows unless you dress your girl in pink with bows in her hair or your boy with jean overalls and a crew cut, someone born in 1935-1945 is going to guess it wrong). Sadly, most of their brains didn't rot too much - they started that way, didn't change, and the world moved on without them (except for that short yet infinite moment where you're stuck in a time loop as they crucify you with a one-sided conversation). Small talk from a really old person is just as inane, scattered, impersonal, and forgettable as scrolling the toks, tweets, and other shorts, where you can leave a comment but it probabaly isn’t getting “read".” Don’t mistake these encounters for real human interaction - any real connections that occur through this medium are just as rare as developing a relationship with a content creator online.
You can read articles from the pre-WWI era lamenting the lack of spine in their time’s younger generation, with all the old people worring their children will never amount to anything. Those youths were soft, they're naïve. They had the attention span of a squirrel and no appreciation for the classics. Those youngsters couldn't sit for even 15 minutes to hear a symphony, already off floppin and flappin on some dance floor to music that sounded like monkeys banging trashcans. 6 months later after an opinion piece lamenting the above hit the New York Times, the US suffered 116,516 killed in the Great War, half from disease and half on the front lines. Those youngsters became parents during the Great Depression, and raised their children to become what many call The Greatest Generation. As that old Roman poet Horace once said: adversity reveals the genius of men - prosperity conceals it.
Like changing seasons, each new century sweeps the swamp-rot away and we replace it with a new flood of crap. Our current festering brain rot just happens to be AI, twitter, and tiktok, new flavors of the same old story, and no real long-term threat to the enduring human spirit.
Oh, and I'm a 41-year-old man and I eagerly anticipate every release of DaFuq!?Boom!'s - including Skibidi toilet:
You'll have to rip my spleen from my cold, dead hands. Currently searching the internet for ways to accelerate post-mortem rot:
Game of thrones, except bugs. Also a scientist, starships, recovery of lost technology, and space colonization.
It’s unique.
Just click the link already:
I sniffed some Datura flowers by accident and I can’t say for sure, but I think it influenced my decision to put Behemoth at the bottom here (which is DREAD’s top spot). The characters Dev and Emer are so real I expect them to invite me to lunch next Sunday. They’ve evolved from starry-eyed student lovers to overly-familiar adults living under a compromise. This setup has a universal appeal I think any married person can relate to (even if you haven’t personally lost your spark to a roast or potatoes).
Dev and Emer’s fading romance, relatable and perhaps a smidge heartbreaking, draws you in, and all the while a there’s this Datura plant - a botanical villain so sneaky you won’t know whether to water it or call an exorcist. Behemoth’s first chapter might sound like a slow simmer but I found it so immersive that it passed quickly for me. Doherty's got a knack for making the mundane feel menacing, promising the unhinged with a subtlety that has one leaning over the pot waiting for it to boil over and hit them in the face:
Oops! Looks like my top spot is actually for two people, not one. Or maybe the Datura flower influence causes me to break my nonexistent rules.
Pat may be at his best when he describes old guys. Queer, oddball, quaint old guys. Old guys you find in the cracks - tarnished little treasure people in the places most writers aren't looking. It’s not just cute, either, it’s a fascinating look into a gentle old man whose clearly seen some bad @%!* in his time.
This is the third chapter of Pat’s serial. It charmed me so much that I am linking this chapter without having read the first or second (maybe I did and just forgot?). Dive in here, or follow one of his links to chapter one. Either way I’m confident you’ll be entertained:
I have everything I post automatically set to go paid after being up for 3 months. But I’ve re-released this short story for free - I hope it gets some deserved love.
An Angel’s Armor is based directly on my unpublished novel Deupawn: Burning Angels. It features one main character and is formed from dozens of excerpts extracted and woven into a standalone short story.
A newly sentient machine warrior’s mission goes sideways and throws her onto a path of emergence and self-discovery:
Deupawn: An Angel's Armor
A young posthuman is granted awareness and learns the mysteries of her organic ancestors.
Thanks for reading!
DREAD Reviews Table of Contents (Searchable)
DREAD 8 DREAD 9 DREAD 10 DREAD 11 DREAD 12
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This is awesome please keep it going! Hilarious review of Bradley's piece! Look forward to seeing more!
Well, looky here — that’s me in there. Thanks.