About Douglas Lain: Douglas Lain is a postmodern writer whose books include the Bizarro fiction novella Wave of Mutilation from Eraserhead Press, and the magical realist novel Billy Moon from Tor Books.
If life is a video game, then most of us have no chance of winning, if by winning you mean succeeding in a quest or saving a princess.
What we want is a social harmony, even as we live in a world where any idea about 'the real thing' is as likely to evoke the ancient memory of an advertisement for a soda pop as anything solid or necessary.
In every story of solipsism, there is always a conspiracy. Why? Because there is always a background involved in every perception.
Science fiction has always had a dark side. There has been a touch of the irrational and absurd in the genre from the very beginning.
The genre of science fiction is a fun house, an amusement park ride, but it's also a problem. The question that's always being indirectly asked is this: 'Just who do we think we are and, further, who do we want to be?'
Critics and academics often employ theories and philosophers in order to help them understand and dissect movies and books.
While I'm interested in philosophy, I find all the different theories out there somewhat difficult to get a firm grip on. Movies and novels, on the other hand, are easy to understand. So what I like to do is use pop cultural ephemera of all kinds as ...
