being online tomorrow is going to be annoying
2 months ago
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Posts by ＰＡＵＬ Ｋ | ＷＡＫＥ ＩＳＬＡＮＤ
3 months ago
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The Illuminated Man. Life, Death and the Worlds of JG Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan.
This book is about J. G. Ballard. This book is also about death, love and time travel. In 2024, Nina Allan's husband, the novelist Christopher Priest died. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had metastasised into the bones, the same disease that killed the man whose biography he'd spent his last months working on - the cult author, J. G. Ballard. J. G. Ballard possessed one of the most astonishing imaginations of our age, and he had an intense and turbulent history: a childhood spent in the encroaching shadow of World War II, teenage internment in a Japanese prison camp - an experience famously fictionalised in Empire of the Sun. Ballard's novels are among the finest and most unusual fiction that has ever been published. Whether in the hyper-surrealism of High Rise or the erotic violence of Crash, he upended the morality and reality of our world.
Christopher knew many of Ballard's friends and colleagues personally. As a young writer, it had been Ballard's stories, most of all, that had helped cement his passion for science fiction. With much of their early work published in the same magazines, Priest knew about Ballard's world from the inside. He set out to write a biography that would make people understand what he already knew: that J. G. Ballard wasn't just a cult writer - he was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. When Nina and Christopher first met, they bonded over their love for Ballard's writing, rereading his novels and stories together many times. When it became clear that Christopher would not have time to finish this biography, Nina promised him that she would complete it, patching together with her own voice the gaps that remained. If the book began as a tribute from Priest to Ballard, it is now also a love story written by Nina for Christopher. With access to never-before-seen material, The Illuminated Man explores the history and themes of Ballard's life and - with Ballardian strangeness - celebrates and mourns for those that are gone. This is the story of two deaths, three science fiction writers and one attempt to turn back time.
One for those 'most anticipated books of next year' lists. Allan on Priest on Ballard and everything in between.
4 months ago
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The early 2020s took us to the ocean floor. The ride is over. There’s no deeper to go. Now we have to step off the elevator and try to live in this place, however hostile it is to life.
open.substack.com/pub/wakeisla...
3 months ago
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I envy families who love sports and watch them together instead of spending hours debating what to do. Spacing out on football and eating nachos sounds like heaven
3 months ago
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On January 5th, we’re putting out the final post for 2025. In the meantime, we wanted to share a year-end image edition:
open.substack.com/pub/wakeisla...
4 months ago
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2025 was the biggest drag for movies. These were the only ones I enjoyed
4 months ago
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4 months ago
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open.substack.com/pub/wakeisla...
Perhaps to save itself from the hive mind, humanity is fragmenting once again, breaking the Tower of Babel before some wrathful deity breaks it for us.
4 months ago
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Nothing is more irritating than watching people post their faux-profound, cynical takes on Thanksgiving, especially the Euros, lecturing from afar like their ancestors didn’t flee their own collapsing realities to come here and help conquer the natives. Worry about yourselves
4 months ago
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Contemporary reality feels like a scratch ticket that we’ve scratched everything off of, and yet what’s revealed underneath is either illegible or a harder, stranger form of coating that no tool can scratch.
5 months ago
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6 months ago
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The rage bait has been taken, swallowed, digested. Rage is the sacrament of a church that’s lost its tether to the divine, a cleansing ritual that no longer cleanses but leads only to more rage, the ceaseless desire for the next hit.
6 months ago
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The newest Episode of Writing The Rapids is out now! I talked to @raviddice.bsky.social about his new book The Squimbop Condition ( @1111press.bsky.social ), and all that wild ride of a book entails. Take a listen.
7 months ago
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a lot of demonic energy is surging out there today
7 months ago
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If July was Post-Paranoia, August is the breakdown of appetite. The Ozempic Era. What do you do when the bloodlust you think you’re resisting, but secretly crave, spills over because you can’t stomach any more?
open.substack.com/pub/wakeisla...
7 months ago
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If July was Post-Paranoia, August is the breakdown of appetite. The Ozempic Era. What do you do when the bloodlust you think you’re resisting, but secretly crave, spills over because you can’t stomach any more?
open.substack.com/pub/wakeisla...
7 months ago
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Introducing THE SQUIMBOP CONDITION by the homie @raviddice.bsky.social 🔥
This collection includes stories previously published in SwR so we're collabing with @1111press.bsky.social
Pre-order the book and get our fall issue FREE 💥
1111press.com/the-squimbop...
8 months ago
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In the end,you can’t turn your head from the flood and be spared its damage. And even in doing so, you sense something is being withheld. Like an Escher drawing of a man staring at the back of his own head, looking away fuses with looking in, until you can’t separate walking away from walking toward
8 months ago
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open.substack.com/pub/wakeisla...
8 months ago
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If May was a month to regroup, then June is when shit hits the fan. The possible beginning of a world war lands on Friday the 13th, the same weekend as Father’s Day, my first as a daddy to my baby daughter.
open.substack.com/pub/wakeisla...
9 months ago
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Ocean Vuong is transgressive
10 months ago
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10 months ago
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