Dadaoism
Page 43
Nina Allan’s stories have appeared regularly in the magazines Black Static and Interzone, and have featured in the anthologies Catastrophia, Subtle Edens, Strange Tales from Tartarus, Best Horror of the Year #2 and Year’s Best SF #28. A first collection of her fiction, A Thread of Truth, was published by Eibonvale Press in 2007, followed by her story cycle The Silver Wind in 2011. Twice shortlisted for the BFS and BSFA Award, Nina’s next book, Stardust, will be available from PS Publishing in autumn 2012. An exile from London, she lives and works in Hastings, East Sussex.
Paul Jessup
Paul Jessup doesn’t exist.
Peter Gilbert
Peter Gilbert has had work appear in The Curious Record, Cynic On-Line, Axe Factory, Hobo Pancakes, Low Budget Science Fiction and other venues. ‘Body Poem’ was first written in 1994. No editors at the time took interest, but the author believed the story had value. The manuscript sat on an old large format disk, until it was rescued and copied in 2010 onto newer usable computer media. The manuscript was tweaked slightly to eliminate some cultural cobwebs, but remains largely as written in 1994.
Quentin S. Crisp
Quentin was born in 1972 in North Devon, England. He is the author of a number of volumes of short and long fiction, including Morbid Tales (Tartarus Press, 2004), Rule Dementia! (Rainfall Books, 2005), and “Remember You’re a One-Ball!” (Chômu Press, 2010).
‘Koda Kumi’ is the Justin Isis remix of his short tale ‘Italiannetto’, which first appeared in the collection All God’s Angels, Beware! (Ex Occidente Press, 2009). ‘Italiannetto’ is a tale of the part played by Annette Funicello in the childhood of the narrator.
Ralph Doege
Ralph Doege was born in 1971 in a small town in Germany. After studying librarianship, and writing a thesis on the life and work of Philip K. Dick, he began to write stories and essays for several magazines and anthologies. He was nominated for Kurd-Laßwitz-Prize and Deutsche Science Fiction Prize for his story “Schwarze Sonne” (Black Sun), and he is the editor of the anthology “Julio Cortázars Fantomas gegen die multinationalen Vampire und andere Erzählungen aus und über Lateinamerika” (Julio Cortázar’s Fantomas against multinational Vampires and other stories from Latin America). In 2010 he released his first story collection: Ende der Nacht (End of Night). Locus online wrote about his first story collection: “Most of Doege’s stories feature fantasy and/or SF elements, but the focus is always on psychological dilemmas. This in itself is pretty unusual for German science fiction and fantasy, and Doege takes it a step further by repeatedly confronting his characters with virtually unsolvable philosophical problems. (…) he is a truly unique and highly recommended voice in German speculative fiction.”
At the moment he is working on another anthology, his next book, and on stories for other anthologies and magazines.
Reggie Oliver
REGGIE OLIVER has been a professional playwright, actor, and theatre director since 1975. Besides plays, his publications include the authorised biography of Stella Gibbons, Out of the Woodshed, published by Bloomsbury in 1998, four collections of strange stories, and a novel, The Dracula Papers I - The Scholar’s Tale (Chômu Press)—the first of a projected tetralogy. An omnibus edition of his stories entitled Dramas from the Depths is published by Centipede, as part of its Masters of the Weird Tale series. A fifth collection of his tales, Mrs Midnight, was published by Tartarus in September 2011. In 2010/2011 his farce, Once Bitten, was a Christmas season sell-out hit at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. His stories have appeared in over thirty anthologies.
Rhys Hughes
Rhys Hughes has been a published writer for almost twenty years. In that time he has written six hundred stories, published twenty books and been translated into ten different languages. He has forgotten to keep count of his articles, poems and other stuff. But his blog can be read at: http://rhysaurus.blogspot.com.
Sonia Orin Lyris
Across the years my fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, most recently including this one and Intel’s Tomorrow Project. If you search the dusty, back corners of some used bookstores you might find my first novel, which, I’m told, is pretty good. My non-fiction runs the gamut from musings about virtual society to language rants to Argentine tango. I’ve begun and sculpted a number of companies because I enjoy creating things with humans. According to rumor, I’m either very funny or very annoying or very both.
I practice dance and fighting arts, which have more in common than I had any idea of until recently. I’m exceptionally fond of bittersweet chocolate and freshly picked piano music.
I’m trivially easy to find online and I appreciate fan mail. I can be bought, hired, and flattered. I have a wikipedia page which you’re welcome to update, but only if you can make me sound increasingly interesting and accomplished.
I appreciate being read more than I can say. Thanks.
Yarrow Paisley
Yarrow Paisley lives in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. His writing has appeared here and there. Consult yarrowpaisley.com.
Endnotes
Grief
1) Maurice Blanchot, The Unavowable Community. Trans. Pierre Joris. (Barrytown: Station Hill, 1988) 18.
2) Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, edited by Donald Tyson. (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 2003) 108.
3) Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Tales and Poems. (New York: Vintage/Random House, 1975) 258.
4) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufman. (New York: Random House, 1974) 168.
5) This fire making process they called “busting.” It entailed spinning a pointed stake of wood threaded through a bow, the stake held down against a softer piece of wood by a rock with a groove in it. With luck and heavy exertion the boy would “bust” and create a little burning eye in a pile of black punk. After that all that had to be done was to dump the ember into a nest consisting of soft, flammable tinder and coax it into a larger fire with careful, cold breaths. In the process of building these fires the boys used up much of the clothing they were buried in and were often forced to raid clotheslines above ground. They favored pajamas suits, as the flannel was especially good for burning. Seniority could be measured by observing which boys had moved out of their stiff black suits into softer pastel outfits
Kago Ai
1) For the denouement and ‘end theme’ to the story, please look up “Saa, Koibito ni Narou” with the startpage.com search engine. Thank you. Arigatou. Bai bai!
Acknowledgements
The editors of this anthology would like to thank Léon Crisp, Anil Nataly, Sharon Ayre (proofreading), James Tressel (for ‘oulemon’), the various contributors (naturally) and all those who have been paying enough attention to existence (both real and irreal) to have supported Chômu thus far.
Also from Chômu Press:
Looking for something else to read? Want a book that will wake you up, not put you to sleep?
“Remember You’re a One-Ball!”
By Quentin S. Crisp
I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like
By Justin Isis
Revenants
By Daniel Mills
The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children
By Brendan Connell
Nemonymous Night
By D.F. Lewis
The Great Lover
By Michael Cisco
The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar’s Tale
By Reggie Oliver
Jeanette
By Joe Simpson Walker
Here Comes the Nice
By Jeremy Reed
For more information about these books and others, please visit: http://chomupress.com/
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