Last Week's Apocalypse-stories by douglas lain

Book Arrives

douglain@hevanet.com — Thu, 26 Jan 06 10:58:00 UT

Jason Williams called up tonight, from the front gate, and like a drunken teenager announced that it was time to drink. His exact words were something like "Bring out your Doug. It's time to drink." When I arrived at the bar I discovered that there were three boxes of Last Week's Apocalypse waiting for me. Having read the collection already I was not exactly sure what to do with the copy I was handed. I thought about rubbing it on my various body parts, but was subdued by the realization that this act would have been percieved as impolite.
Instead of stimulating my nipples I spoke to Colleen Lindsay and Mahesh Maj Rohan. Mahesh accepted a copy of the book, after all he'd paid for one in advance, and seemed pleased to have me sign it. Nice of him. Colleen turned out to be Night Shade Books' new publicity chief, although I'm sure her exact title is something else entirely.
Then it was back home again, within the half hour, with three large boxes of books in tow.

Publisher's Weekly Review

douglain@hevanet.com — Sat, 17 Dec 05 19:25:00 UT

Here is the review of Last Week's Apocalypse from Publisher's Weekly.

Being paranoid provides no reason to doubt that They are not [sic.] out to get you, as Lain's ambitious postmodern story collection proves. In homage to past warriors against totalitarianism, contemporary Winston Smiths battle the trap of capitalism's ever-receding promise of a meaningful life via meaningless work ("Instant Labor"). Picking among the castoffs of baby boomer consumerism, Lain's Gen-X protagonists desperately try to construct an identity in a culture where novelty undermines authenticity. The simplicity of sea monkeys ("The Sea Monkey Conspiracy") and the rigidity of the Cold War ("I Read the News Today") are the closest to fixed values that can be found, and even they are uncertain at best. Characters learn, via a malfunctioning holographic Jesus ("How to Stop Selling Jesus"), that salvation is not granted but attained. Lain intrudes in his narratives, exploiting metafictive devices like direct address and references to other stories, tying a character's quest for identity to his own quest to unravel the stifling logic of America's malled-in society. Distracting typographic tricks contribute to the atmosphere of uncertainty.

stickers

douglain@hevanet.com — Sat, 1 Oct 05 13:54:00 UT

If you haven't already heard I have some LWA stickers. If you'd like a dozen or so to stick up on phone booths, street signs, or on your forehead let me know.

Advance Copies

douglain@hevanet.com — Tue, 20 Sep 05 19:50:00 UT
Advance Review copies of LWA should be arriving in two weeks.

LWA Blurbs

douglain@hevanet.com — Sat, 17 Sep 05 13:51:00 UT
Have you seen these?

"Douglas Lain has a great brain. I am hugely impressed with his prospects to be a completely uncommercial genius. God help him." -Jonathan Lethem

The stories in Last Week's Apocalypse are like a series of short, sharp shocks. Lain's writing is unsettling, ferociously smart, and extremely addictive. -Kelly Link

"It's legitimate SF, and it's 'mainstream,' and it's metafiction: I don't know anyone else doing quite what Lain is doing (here and elsewhere); fascinating work, moving, strikingly honest, powerful." -Rich Horton, Locus

"It drives straight out of the Pamela Zoline era of New Wave fiction, with a strong dose of nuclear paranoia and Reagan-era 'kill a Commie for mommy' reverse-nostalgia." -Jay Lake

"Reads with compelling immediacy, an unnerving combination of masks, secrets that distort and finally shred one's identity, psychological experiments, and the growing threat of war in the Gulf Coast--focusing on Iraq." -Sherwood Smith, Tangent Online

"Lain is a master at imbedding information for the reader to discover on subsequent readings." - Therese Pieczynski, Tangent Online

http://www.douglaslain.com/purchase.html

Today's Apocalyptic News

douglain@hevanet.com — Thu, 1 Sep 05 20:16:00 UT
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Rabid Transit/Small Press Journals

douglain@hevanet.com — Wed, 17 Aug 05 18:40:00 UT
The story "The Headline Trick" was published in a small journal called Rabid Transit in 2003. I wrote the story specifically for the chapbook in a fit of what I thought was generosity. Rabid Transit only paid $20 for a story and I was still mired in the thought of getting paid real money for my fiction every time, but I liked the Ratbastards (a group of four excellent writers named Deniro, Barzak, Anderson, and Livdahl) and I hadn't finished anything for awhile, so I buckled down and wrote and wrote and turned in the story about a month late. I remember telling my boss about the sale when word came that they'd accepted the story.

"I sold another story," I said.
"Yeah. To what publication?"
"Ahhhh...to a little 'zine thing. It's called Rabid Transit."
"Oh. I'm sorry."

But I was wrong and my boss was wrong (about a lot more than just Rabid Transit) and this little chapbook got a lot of attention, and "The Headline Trick" got good notices in Locus and elsewhere. Eventually the story was even translated into Japanese for a publication called Hayakawa's SF.

So...uh...the moral of the story is always be generous with your writing. Right?

Totally Nude

douglain@hevanet.com — Tue, 16 Aug 05 16:23:00 UT
Here I am, in the nude, doing what writers do best.

Today's Apocalyptic News

douglain@hevanet.com — Mon, 15 Aug 05 11:52:00 UT

Illustration by Gee Vaucher

Counterpunch keeps printing them, and I keep linking to them:
Slouching Towards Armaggedon.

excerpt:
Gentle reader, do you realize the danger of having a president so disconnected from reality that he plots to attack Iran--a country three times the size of Iraq--when he lacks sufficient forces to occupy Baghdad and to protect the road from Baghdad to the airport?

Plus here's a link to another excerpt from the novella I Read the News Today and a link to the purchase page for Last Week's Apocalypse.

Novella Excerpt
Buy the Book!

Here's Another Link to a Story

douglain@hevanet.com — Fri, 12 Aug 05 21:00:00 UT
While the LWA webpage only links to two stories as samples, 4 of the 14 stories in LWA are already available for free online.

Here's a link to one of the stories I didn't link to before:

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020114/identity.shtml

Random Facts about LWA

douglain@hevanet.com — Thu, 11 Aug 05 16:21:00 UT
The first story (chronologially) in this collection would be "Instant Labor." The last story written was "The Word Mermaid Written on an Index Card." The entire collection represents a six year writing period and includes 14 out of the 17 stories written in that period.

Observation: I am a slow, perhaps even lazy and certainly distracted, writer.

Free Speech and the End of the World

douglain@hevanet.com — Wed, 10 Aug 05 18:16:00 UT

Since only a few people read the LWA blog and since it appears that most of you are writers I thought I'd ask a writing related question.

Has one of your fictional characters ever contacted you in real life? It's happened to me...sort of.

The main character in Free Speech and the End of the World wrote to tell me that I'd gotten it wrong. A man named Noah wrote that he'd seen how the world ends and it didn't involve copying machines.

This story isn't included in the collection, but when it appeared in Pif Magazine in September of 2001 I figured it was the most prophetic and important just because of the title alone. My one regret about "Free Speech" is that it originally included a tribute to Robert Sheckley, but the editors at Pif Magazine didn't know who he was and asked for that bit to be cut.

I still think the story is better with the Tribute.

Suburbs of the Citadel of Thought

douglain@hevanet.com — Mon, 8 Aug 05 18:56:00 UT

The first story I sold to a slick magazine was "Instant Labor." The magazine was Amazing Stories and the year was 1999. Nearly a decade after I sold my first fiction to The Fiction Primer, and a full five years after my second fiction sale to Next Phase, I was finally hitting the big time.

And it was terrific. Amazing came out with a beautiful illustration by John Jude Palencar and the story was reviewed in Locus and Tangent Online, and I'd made it.

I'd made it!

And then Amazing rejected the story that later became "Shopping at the End of the World". And then everyone else rejected "Shopping at the End of the World". And then Amazing rejected "Music Lessons." And then everyone else rejected "Music Lessons."

And then I gave up. I didn't care anymore. I wasn't going to stop writing, but I wasn't going to even try to write something marketable. I was going to write something distinctly unmarketable. Something that nobody would like except me.

And it sold. I submitted it to the now defunct journal Winedark Sea and it sold right away.

Here's the blurb for this story from my other website:

I wrote a story about a mental patient named Philip Hoffman. I made him the only one who knew the truth about the coming alien invasion. I made it so that he could see into the future. I gave Philip Hoffman psychic powers so that he could spot the flying saucers, so that he would know I was coming.

I flew toward Earth at 100,000 light years per second, from the other side of the galaxy. And I wrote it all down as I went, making it happen.

And here's a review from Forrest Aguirre:

The hints of Philip K. Dick present in "A Perfect Day for Babyfish," however, cannot compare with the decidedly Dickian tale "The Suburbs of the Citadel of Thought." Here Douglas Lain presents the longest and one of the strongest stories of the issue. Lain directly acknowledges his debt to the old master by noting that his main character, Philip Hoffman, is named after Philip K. Dick and Abbie Hoffman. Lain laces the story with anecdotes of this sortâmany of them dealing directly with Lain's own family history and experiences. The wonderful autobiographical inserts leave the reader wondering whether Lain has written the story or the story has written Lain. The overall premise involves Philip's psychic abilities (or is it madness?) and the impending arrival (paranoid delusion?) of aliens as they affect his adulterous relationship with a pop-kitsch minister's wife. One is never quite sure if the main character is sane or not, nor is the reader ever clear about what is real and what is illusion. A fitting tribute to Philip K. Dick.

The lesson here? Clearly the message is that the best thing a writer can do is GIVE UP!

Today's Apocalyptic News

douglain@hevanet.com — Wed, 3 Aug 05 16:47:00 UT

Here's an article from Counterpunch entitled When Armaggedon gets no press.

LWA Quiz

douglain@hevanet.com — Wed, 3 Aug 05 00:11:00 UT
I wasted some time on Quizilla trying to make an interesting quiz as yet another marketing trick. I'm not entirely convinced that it was time well spent.

You are The Dead Celebrity:
Ernie Becker wants to be a cartoonist, but he's
too busy struggling between the frames of his
life: his job at the popcorn stand, his
relationship with the water massage girl, his
meager talentnone of it is going the way Ernie
wants.

Ernie's "comics" are just his way of
working out this disappointment. It's revenge.
He subverts the funny pagespunches a hole
through the circle of Family Circus,explodes
the tranquility of Ziggy.

But, after he finds a dead body at the mall,
something clicks into place. Suddenly Ernie's
comics are in demand.

What Apocalypse are you?
brought to you by Quizilla