Fiction

The Idaho Zephyr Jigsaw Nation Forthcoming

I'm looking at my photography project in the dark, by the light from the TV, and even in this dim light, even as I listen to triumphal administration officials, the uneasy awe from the announcers, the endless babble about the Red and the Blue, the casualties, the stock index, employment figures, Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, I can see that I won't be able to fit these pictures together.

I'll have to cut more out, exclude more of the image.

Winston O Link perfected the railroads. He made the steam engine new, but I can't do it. My vision is fractured. All I have is a series of static images, disconnected parts, without synergy.

The Word "Mermaid" on an Index Card Third Alternative Forthcoming

I sit on the ground, next to a wooden bench with a donor's name on a plaque, and I spill a handful of the glass beads on the weathered planks. I spread the baubles out. All of them are clear glass, all have a bubble in the center. I try to arrange them by size, but somebody sits on the bench next to my display. She just plops down, not even looking. I glance up at her; she's about my age, maybe twenty. She's wearing cat eyeglasses and has the kind of black hair that's obvious dyed.

She's kind of pretty. She's got a far away look in her eyes like she just got out of her parents' Winnebago, or like she's on Thorazine. I look at the shapeless but short dress she's wearing. It's gray and black with square patterns of stripes, and I can't decide whether or not it's a hospital gown.

I go back to arranging the beads on the bench but stop again when she reaches down and takes one. She holds the bead in her palm and stares, her eyes flashing back and forth on it, scanning. Then she pops the bead into her mouth. She doesn't say a word, but takes another bead, and another, and swallows them dry.

A Coffee Cup/Alien Invasion Story Strange Horizons Feb 7, 2005

The UFOs in the sky over Portland look like hubcaps. Silver or chrome plated saucers, all of them roughly the same size and all of them spinning, hang miraculously in mid-air, but most people either don't see them or pretend that they don't see.

At first the saucers were news. The same shot of a silver disc hovering over the White House dominated every television broadcast. But, when nothing more happened, after administration officials appeared on the Sunday morning talk-shows and denied that there had necessarily been an alien invasion, after the President called for more study, the cameras were turned back towards earth. By the end of the second week the saucers were no longer a serious topic of conversation, and now, at the end of the third week, most people barely remember that they are up there at all.

"Are we going to talk about it?" Alex asks.

"I don't know. I'm out of booze again," Shelly says.

The Dead Celebrity The Whirligig August, 2004

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 talent—none 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 pages—punches 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.

Music Lessons Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet June, 2004

Jonathan Zuckerman is a minimalist composer who can't help repeating himself. He's obsessed with a particular sound, a sound that's plagued him since he was three years old--a sound that isn't really a sound, but is just something that happens inside his head.

Jonathan Zuckerman is a contactee who has been given a mission, but he doesn't understand what he's supposed to do or why he's supposed to do it. The aliens have planted notes and notions in his head, but he's left as a blank. Jonathan Zuckerman isn't concious of his own life.

Jonathan Zuckerman is afraid of the Purple Pandas. Afraid of Mr. Rogers neighborhood, but he's working on the score.

Shopping at the End of the World, Strange Horizons, September, 2003

If you want to understand how the disorder spread from the Lloyd Center Mall to the rest of the city of Portland, how the blood in our Orange Juliuses became a radioactive haze in the streets, you should start with what didn't happen.

Nobody got hurt; like reverse neutron bombs, the blasts only destroyed the architecture. Sure, people died in the riots, people were trampled to death, there were gunshot wounds, lacerations from broken glass, and heart attacks, but the explosions themselves didn't produce even one casualty. There was absolutely no destruction of organic life at all. Even the moss on Portland's sidewalks, the planted oak trees and pines, the weeds and grasses in vacant lots, were spared.

Death was missing and so was smoke. There was no smoke. Somehow Portland burned without it.

The Headline Trick, Rabid Transit, June, 2003

"Would you like to know what I do with the headlines I clip everyday?" he asks. "It's mostly a matter of the hand being faster than the eye, but there are cracks in the rules. Not everything is always simple. It's not all just cause and effect."

"So show me," I say.

And, after a bit more whisky, he does. Right there in the bar he shows me his real trick, over by the video poker machines. He takes the headlines, folds them in half, and puts them in a deposit envelope for the ATM machine. He inserts a debit card into the ATM, deposits the headlines, and gets back cash.

The '84 Regress, Infinite Matrix, May, 2003

Life in the eighties isn't all bad. Television, for instance, is better than you might remember it being; there are fewer stations, fewer commercials, and everything is slower, slowed down. There aren't ATM's or FAX machines; there aren't any e-mail messages.

Driving on the interstate, counting the yellow dashes that zoom by, it all makes sense. The last sixteen years were just a series of bizarre nightmares, everything was just as unreal as it felt, and the year 1984 never ended.

Let me repeat:

The year 1984 never ended.

It's my own unified field theory. Generation X, the Clinton presidency, Jay Leno, my relationships with women -- all of it makes sense now.

The Sea Monkey Conspiracy Polyphony September, 2002

For a hundred dollars a week the experiment sounded appealing.

And while you were against the coming war, against wars in general, you didn't feel too strongly about it.

So you signed up, agreed that the University was not responsible for any physical or psychological injuries you might sustain during your participation in the study, and it wasn't until the package with the Sea Monkeys and John Philip Sousa LP arrived in your mailbox, wasn't until the cartoon missiles flew across maps of the Middle East on television, that you knew you'd made a mistake.

Read Paul Williams' comment on "Sea Monkeys" for the Polyphony book jacket.

The Subliminal Son The Third Alternative May, 2002

Working in advertising, designing campaigns for food products that have no nutritional value and cars that aren't safe, has it's own set of problems. But, it is something you actually know how to do.

What's more difficult is coping with your son's speech impediment.

He's four years old, his vocabularly is huge, but only you and your wife can understand what he says.

So you sound the words out for him.

Sailboat. Soap. Spaceman.

Your job, more than anything, is to make him say the words out loud.

Identity is a Construct Strange Horizons January, 2002

Jack is a robot on an intergalactic mission. His job is to deliver all of human culture to the aliens. His job is to translate all of human culture into a single sentence so that the aliens might understand.

Jack is a human being. He is trapped in a psychological experiment gone awry. He has been given the task of translating all of human culture into a single sentence so that the scientists can understand.

To be a Pepper is to be a Cracker Jack kid.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Identity is a construct.

This story made the Top Five for January 2002 at the Index of Fiction Online

Free Speech and the End of the World Pif Magazine November, 2001

Noah is an aging ex-radical whose psychic powers make it difficult for him to live with the failure of the 1960's. He keeps himself busy taking photos for the local paper, focusing his lens on politicians and corporate flaks, parades and press conferences, because remembering his activist past always brings on visions of an apocalyptic future.

But, when the Free Speech Movement's leader, Mario Savio, has a heart attack and dies at the age of 53, Noah has to go back.

The people's park, the civil rights movement, the black panthers, free love—Noah has to go through it all again.

On a Scale of One to Three Pif Magazine November 2000

Your mother wants to give you a personality test because you're obsessing about "this end of the world nonsense." Your dad is too busy buying souvenirs at the gift shop. He doesn't notice that your hair is falling out.

Family vacations can be a real drag. Nuclear bombs are even worse. The two together are enough to wreck your mind.

Selling Jesus Amazing Stories Spring 2000

In the future Jesus isn't just a Superstar, He's a holographic, hypertextual, artificial intelligence. And He's For Sale. With this upgrade to Christianity there are profits to be made everywhere.

It's just that doing the work of a bible salesman is still miserable. Living out of motels and eating dehydrated eggs in your Studebaker, it's bad enough to keep you guessing: Who's the one being crucified?

"Selling Jesus" is reviewed by Christopher East at Tangent Online.

Suburbs of the Citadel of Thought Winedark Sea Winter 2000

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.

"The Suburbs of the Citadel of Thought" is reviewed by Forrest Aguire at Tangent Online.

Instant Labor Amazing Stories Spring 1999

Why bother to stay awake when all you have is a McJob?

Instant Labor Incorporated is the perfect place to work if you don't want to get too involved. Just plug your brain into the computer and let yourself fall away, when you wake up it will be time to go home.

Webb Little is a would be filmmaker who decides to plug in and tune out. He goes instant so he'll have more time for editing, but ends up with too much discontinuity.

You always splice the ones you love.

Non-Fiction

From Tevis to Dick an essay SlapshotWinter 1998

The Man Who Fell to Earthby Walter Tevis is the story of a scrawny, alcoholic little green man who fails his mission, and in the end can only learn to cope with a life of quiet desperation.

The Man Who Fell to Earthby Nicholas Roeg is a film staring David Bowie, about the bizarre spinnings of a superstar who appears most alien when trying to appear human; not a man at all, but a sexually ambiguous, super hip image.

In VALISPhilip K. Dick pays tribute to Roeg by creating a film entitled VALIS.In this film called VALISa rock star named Mother Goose plays the lead and everything is sexually ambiguous and super hip.

Here's the process: The alien leaves from Tevis's autobiographical fantasy, crosses over Roeg's disconnected and affectless wasteland, and ends up transformed and transfigured in the kipple filled fiction of Philip K. Dick. Roeg's movie is the bridge that Tevis's everyman character must cross in order to get to the other side.

Diet Soap was my Anarchist/UFO 'zine in the early 90s.

Diet Soap tastes bad, but it's good for you. Diet Soap washes away excess pounds and reveals the truth. Diet Soap is a product you desperately need. Eat Diet Soap everyday and have smoother ideas.

Take a bite, read the last issue!

The Fiction of Douglas Lain
Email Douglas Lain