DREAD Reviews 2
An issue of Dad Reads, Examines Authors while Distracted
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For me, the joy of writing comes from waterboarding objective reality with an ever-thickening torrent of semantics until I’ve tortured new meaning out of it. Because let’s be honest, reality had it coming. At its best reality is fuzzy and elusive and we really don’t understand it. And at its worst (usually late at night when one teeters at the precipice of full understanding) we find reality is terrifying, or maybe just depressing.
That’s the reason you’re here, after all, to give reality the what-for. And if it’s not why you’re here, that’s okay. I, too, spend the greater part of my day stumbling around hazy with confusion. Just don’t forget that you are currently thirsty and you could use a sip of something right now.
Now that the mind games are behind us, let’s move on to some random things I read and gave a like. Be nice and give a few a like yourself!
A fourth wall breaking Space Bard speaking Ye Olde Ænglish to space aliens gives a spooky PowerPoint presentation about space ghosts at a space tavern:
Two apes cling to their vines. They watch a horde of fiends descend on their jungle like volcanic lava, or perhaps a particularly bloody menstrual cycle. At first they’re relieved to see they are not PMS’s target tonight, but then they realize: “Hey, that’s our tribe, and aren’t we men?” They join up with some like-minded bros and prove that yes, dudes, too, can unleash a destructive tide of hormones:
There’s nothing wrong with giving women penises. But try being a little dangerous today and give one a vagina instead:
E.F. Ortega feels a certain way about the capitalist machine. I empathize, although my pet peeve isn’t socioeconomics, it’s physics. Every time I push, something else pushes back, just like the fat cats do. It’s maddening:
With this one we get off to an immediate good start when an elven child molests a random woman in the street using just his eyes (omg stop feeling sorry for her she’s rich):
You learn early in life that everyone’s a critic, be you tattoo artist or serial killer. Or in this particular case, both. Internet trolls will hack your computer - or the private thoughts inside your brain, if necessary - just to dox and SWAT you:
Is it a dinosaur? Is it a virophage? No, it’s a “her.” Watch “her” hatch from a space egg like an astrophysical platypus:
You already knew there’s a deep state in the USA, but did you know it’s run by mages and vampires? Look more closely at the republicans and democrats currently serving in Congress! Republicans are obviously bumbling old wizards and democrats are secretly drinking our blood:
In this uplifting story the oppression of too many first world choices and the grief of loss combine to form a heady emotional mixture worthy of an Instagram quote:
A clever monkey trapped inside his own head convincingly speculates that his issues are your issues, too. Hopefully this message reaches you before our mutual reality, sustained all this time possibly by a completely accidental coincidence, unravels, exposing what we perceive as the universe for the existential joke it’s always been:
You might not be able to tell who is speaking, or even when they are speaking versus internal monologue, except when that one sexy lady talks about France, I’m pretty sure she’d never keep the topic of France to herself (does anyone?). But does this matter? Break free of The Man and his rules for “quotations” and enjoy dystopia in the best way possible - as a pure, undiluted stream injected directly into your brain:
I don’t know what’s going on in this one, but I’m pretty sure if the school janitor who is hitting the shrooms wrote a short story, it would look something like this. Try not to touch anything, with your fingers or your mind, and especially don’t touch giant polyp doors connected to cosmically angry dimensions:
Sometimes I think reality is a fractal flower forever expanding in a way our minds can chase but never catch up to. And other times I’ve remembered to take my coffee with my meds and forget about reality while I hate-watch the news. What does that have to do with this short story I liked? Nothing, actually, I got distracted - now witness humanity attempt to germinate the stars at the very last second through a sublevel of consciousness we can barely define:
My completely arbitrary top spot (it’s the bottom if you turn it over) goes to Redd Oscar. I’m a big fan of HFY (Humanity Freak yeah! … wait that’s not how it goes). What better way to do this than to put humanity on the brink of extinction and saturate it with characters righteously bitter at inferior races who won’t come to help us and/or outright want to see us dead? Crown it with strong men in heavy armor who aren’t afraid to cry or give long speeches and you’ll make a quick fan out of me:
Last and debatably least comes my self promotion. If these guys wanted to be the four horsemen, they shouldn’t have recruited 4 extra crewmen. On the other hand, the galaxy is a dangerous place, and you never know when you’ll need to call in backup to subdue a little teenage girl, so maybe a little sacrifice to the brand is worth it:
Deupawn: When Angels Sleep
This short story both precedes AND follows my unpublished novel’s prologue. A Samequel? A Preprequelsequel? A reprequel?
I hit my arbitrary quota of 15 DREADful reviews way ahead of schedule and I’ve barely dipped into this week’s Sci-Friday. But damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!
Dread 3 will come sooner than scheduled as well at this rate. I already made 5 entries into it before I hit publish on this one! It’s your own fault, substack. You write too well, and too often!
Until next time - thanks for reading!
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Absolutely incredible 🤣. I laughed out loud at that one! Thanks for reading!
Thanks for the shout out, happy to hear you enjoyed The End of Days so much!