Wheel of Fortune
(Click the image to pop out & expand.) Story by Jason Louv • Art by Gea Philes
The Wizard Way of Bro Science
About six months before turning thirty, I had one of those moments where you realize “damn, I gotta get my shit together.” Devastated from a cycle of working twenty-hour days for months, all of that time spent at the computer — like some freakish latter-day Jeremy Bentham — I was unable to properly climb the … Read more
Commandeering the Inner Space Shuttle
I recently began a series of experiments with the sensory deprivation tank as developed by John C. Lilly, M.D., a device that most have heard of but few have tried. (Yes, that’s the one from the 1980 movie Altered States.) It took me a decade and a half of self-directed experimentation on consciousness to finally … Read more
Conjurations in the Element of Flesh
What are the critical disciplines by which 21st century humanity will initiate itself? How will those who wish to move from reality’s spectator seats to the middle of the ring do so? How has humanity done so in the past? The ancients represented the hall of initiation into the Mysteries as being flanked by two … Read more
Imagine! The Metropolis of Tomorrow!
Imagine! The metropolis of tomorrow! Awaken to see the perfect blue sky from the glass window of your downtown condominium as your personal robot assistant brings you breakfast and your clothes for the day! Survey the glory of your castle and keep, all perfectly temperature-controlled and kept spotless by the newest innovations in household robots, … Read more
Queen Valentine: A Romance in Two Worlds
New York has some strange neighborhoods. There’s the Upper West Side, the Lower East Side and… the Other Side. That’s where the Sidhe live-a race of mythological creatures that have dwelled just under mankind’s nose for millennia, created and kept alive by the dream energy of humans. There’s good ones (Seelie) and bad ones (Unseelie), … Read more
The Freedom of Imagination Act
1. Consider the whole of technology and mechanization as a time machine, beaming itself backward into the past, drawing the present towards it. A nonorganic future, invading the organic past. 2. There is a future in which the machine severs the human soul; another in which it serves the human soul. 3. In the first, … Read more
A Divine Invasion
(Written for my friend Gea’s Bollywood zine before her collaborator jumped ship. Image above borrowed from Leif Jones, one of my favorite illustrators ever—check him here.) 1. Consider the fall of America as a Bollywood routine. Egos tip like dominoes. Blood money runs out. Methamphetamine zombies wander the wastes in packs, huddle up from the … Read more
Sutras for Satyrs
Hymn to Shiva It’s good to have a point To reference yourself by It’s good to have a light To see yourself by It’s good to have an infinity To be finite by It’s good to have a friend To get outstoned by It’s good to have a lover To be outloved by It’s good … Read more
I Am a Mechanical Man: Robocops and Robowars
Peter Weller as Robocop, 1987. Some movies ought to be left alone. Not because they’re no longer relevant — but because they’re too relevant. José Padiliha’s planned 2013 reboot of Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 masterwork Robocop is one such transgression of cinematic and historical decency. In 1987, Robocop was science fiction; now, it’s the nightly news. One wonders … Read more
