El verano es una gran época para la lectura, pero, en mi caso, la lista de pendientes no me permite abordar la de novedades con la conciencia tranquila. Estas vacaciones he decidido, por tanto, enfrentarme a uno de mis pendientes: El hombre en el castillo, de Philip K. Dick. Publicada en 1962 y conocida también por la serie de Netflix, es una novela distópica, aunque también podría clasificarse como ciencia ficción o incluso ficción filosófica. El libro puede considerarse una obra posmoderna por la época en la que fue escrito y por sus características. Elegí esta novela porque me gustó mucho ¿Sueñan los androides con ovejas eléctricas?, otra de las obras más conocidas del autor. Además, me interesan especialmente los temas que aborda.

En esta novela, las potencias del Eje ganaron la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Estados Unidos está dividido en tres partes: la costa del Pacífico, controlada por Japón; la costa del Atlántico, controlada por Alemania; y los Estados de las Montañas Rocosas, que, a pesar de ser un territorio libre, siguen estando bajo la influencia de ambas potencias. En este contexto, el libro presenta la historia de varios personajes de orígenes diversos. Estas historias están conectadas de manera indirecta y parecen independientes unas de otras. El único elemento presente en todas ellas es La langosta se ha posado, un libro escrito por Hawthorne Abendsen. En ese libro, Abendsen relata un mundo en el que el Reino Unido ha ganado la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

La acción tiene lugar principalmente en San Francisco. Allí, Frank Fink y Ed McCarthy han dejado sus trabajos y utilizan su experiencia para abrir un negocio dedicado a fabricar joyas de gran calidad. Representan el sueño americano de empezar de nuevo. Su historia se complementa con la de Robert Childan, propietario de una tienda de antigüedades llamada American Artistic Handcrafts Inc., que representa el papel del estadounidense orgulloso. Decide arriesgarse a vender en su tienda joyas contemporáneas de calidad nacional en lugar de continuar con la seguridad de vender objetos de un pasado que ya no existe. Todo esto sucede en un ambiente opresivo en el que la gente mantiene una visión racista de los estadounidenses. Este es el caso de Nabosuke Tagomi, jefe de la Comisión de Comercio Japonesa, que es retratado como un tradicionalista. Debido a sus creencias, se derrumba después de verse involucrado como intermediario en un plan para descubrir un peligroso plan alemán contra los japoneses. El último personaje cuya vida seguimos es Juliana Fink, exmujer de Frank, que viaja en coche desde Cañon City hasta Denver para conocer al autor de La langosta se ha posado. Después de un enfrentamiento con Joe, un asesino alemán enviado para matar a Abendsen, Juliana se encuentra con el escritor en su casa. Esta visita constituye el clímax de la novela y termina con la confesión de Abendsen de que todo el libro fue escrito siguiendo las instrucciones del I Ching. El I Ching es un antiguo texto chino de adivinación que aparece numerosas veces a lo largo de la novela. Muchos personajes lo utilizan, especialmente Frank Fink y Nabosuke Tagomi, para intentar conocer el futuro o tomar decisiones basándose en sus premoniciones.

Disfruté de la lectura de la novela porque, a pesar de su brevedad, aborda temas complejos sin detenerse en largas descripciones. Los detalles sobre cómo es la vida bajo un gobierno fascista no suelen mostrarse de manera explícita, sino que se dan a entender. Esa es la razón de la aparición del budismo en la historia, un elemento de la cultura japonesa que es impuesto por la fuerza en Estados Unidos. En este sentido, me parece que el I Ching funciona en ocasiones como un deus ex machina, indicando a los personajes cómo actuar o cómo enfrentarse a sus situaciones. Sin embargo, me gusta la manera en que el oráculo se utiliza en la confesión de Hawthorne Abendsen, quien parece ser una analogía de Philip K. Dick y de su propia vida como escritor. Además, admiro la capacidad del autor para introducir temas filosóficos sin largas divagaciones, simplemente presentando el escenario. Investigando a este respecto, parece que de facto el autor utilizó el I Ching para decidir algunos aspectos de la novela.

Este libro fue una experiencia intensa para mí. Esperaba una lectura ligera, con pocos personajes y una trama predecible, para amenizar el verano y de paso tachar un pendiente de mi lista. Sin embargo, me encontré con una novela profunda, llena de personajes interesantes. El final es lo suficientemente abierto como para estimular la imaginación y la especulación. Recomendaría este libro a cualquiera que esté interesado en historias atípicas que van directamente a la acción y no se detienen en largas descripciones o reflexiones.

#Reseñas

The great falsehood.

I was once told that in order to have a happy life, I need discipline. That is false.

Many people like me spend an enormous amount of effort trying to be disciplined and fail everyday. Every day. I contend there is a better way.

Don’t let what disciplined folks can say ruin your day.

There is a way to live undisciplined and be a happy person. You can be content, you can have meaningful relationships, you can feel good about yourself. The rub is that many disciplined people don’t believe this. There is a bias held by many disciplined folk against the undisciplined.

Bias as old as humanity.

As a musically talented bipolar person growing up in the world, I was given many lectures regarding the importance of discipline. I was told the key to success is in discipline, that’s very false. I was told the secret to happiness was discipline, again false, (also not a secret if someone bothered telling it to me). I was given priorities of rigorous discipline by unknowing older or mentor-type adults, many of whom were convinced if I just had discipline, I’d be unstoppable. Seriously, I was told this as a kid.

They have ‘key attributes’ made up for discipline.. a list of biases.

Here’s the kicker, though. Discipline is a skill. That means it is learned. They even have it broken down into key attributes:

• Self-control: Managing your feelings and stopping bad habits.
• Perseverance: Not giving up when things get hard.
• Respect for rules: Obeying laws and guidelines set by authority.
• Dedication: Working hard to finish important tasks.
• Consistency: Doing the right task every day without fail. 

Okay, I’ll just stop a bad habit.

Do you see the inherent bias in this? As a bipolar, the number one key is impossible sometimes. The second item is nothing but bias. The rules suck right now, in response to the third. I don’t have a problem with the 4th, but you aren’t going to know which tasks are important and which are just dumb being dedicated to all of them or dedicated to these rules. Consistency in art is a no-go for me. I don’t even want it. Consistency means no growth, unless you are consistently growing..but they don’t call that discipline. Capitalists love this term, by the way, “consistency.” Artists do not. Maybe some have a little of both in them and they’re fighting each other.. REAL disciplined, guys. (always a dude.)

Dear techs and producers,

I love my disciplined technicians and producers, but many have had difficulty with me not being disciplined. This is not because they know more, not because they know best; it’s bias. They are able to be disciplined, maybe raised that way. They have specific ways of doing things. They are not flexible. That is not me. I am not going to be masterful at discipline at 50 as a bipolar and someone who’s never been that way. Some roads I don’t go down in this life. That is just the way it is.

The good news.

The good news for me is I don’t have to be disciplined to be happy, content, love, or make art. So I am fine.

I do have to do other things. 

I have to make myself a list of rules per project. I mentioned before I set up stations around the house, one station, one job. I have developed routines, like a disciplined person might, just because I am bipolar and it helps mitigate symptoms. I take meds to keep control and be ‘myself’ for long periods of time. I try to sleep a lot. Sleep seems to help me from getting too hyper. Go figure. I am eating better and better, a long, slow, arduous, and even expensive process. But it feels good. I do physical stuff at the day job. Keeps the blood flowing. I also talk a bunch about how I feel. I hope friends let me know if I say something concerning to them. Talking for me is a way to weave myself in the world. The music helps me a lot. But talking seems to be fun for more folks than just me. Haha. Whereas talking to myself, not hitting.

We’re talking self-care here. It might be my only discipline. And that’s FINE.

I do a whole lot to stay on top of symptoms and have fun. But it is not the discipline required to finish a college degree, or even fix a car. Maintenance is hard for me. Learning software bores me to tears. I have done it. But I am not doing it anymore. Music stuff gets to a technical level where I have to make hard choices. I usually make the wrong one. So I change things and hope for better next time. That’s as disciplined as I get. I don’t have years of habit, skill, routine, even living in one place very long. My life has largely been about survival. A strong sense of discipline would have killed me not so long ago. I had to quit, give up, surrender, admit I needed to change, take pills. If I have managed to develop ANY discipline since then, it’s only because I did that stuff first.

Maybe we need both types?

So, you disciplined folks getting frustrated with undisciplined songwriters can chill. Why not play to your strengths? Have a disciplined and an undisciplined relationship. Does the undisciplined person get on your nerves, even though you have never met and you like their songs? Check your bias.

Kelly Kintner, Editor

The Horse’s Mouth Magazine

NOLAN'S ODYSSEY_review

I finally went to the cinema to watch the notorious film about what happened after the trojan war: the famous Odyssey. There’s no such thing as “spoilers” for the Odyssey, my dear reader, historically speaking, there is not even an original that can be taken for it. So read my take if you want; it hardly matters. Or don’t read it, because it’s not important at all.

Anyway, I will say it. Nolan’s Odyssey succeeds in expressing its zeitgeist. He uses the Odyssey as a pretext to talk about the crisis of the American empire, of course. Which, personally, I find disappointing, because Homero's odyssey is far more interesting than watching Matt Damon play yet another traumatized soldier.

Nolan manages the rare feat of irritating the far right, which, on its own, is in my point of view always a good reason to start something, but he also risks alienating another audience: any sort of good story lover.

So the way it hit me: the simplification of the “poor soldier forced to kill thousands but still closes his eyes and cries sincerely because deep down he’s a good person” which immediately reminded me of his last movie, Oppenheimer, with all due respect, it’s in my eyes a repetition of the same moral structure. More than repeating the plot, it’s turned to almost a genre of north american psychoanalysis: revisiting its wars, revising its own guilt, and in the end reaffirming its morality, because if guilt exists, it must mean there’s something fundamentally good in this society, that will raise into the occasion and will save us all. I know.

The script was extremely weak. The dialogues are inconsistent. Odysseus shouting “Let’s get out of this fucking beach!!!!” followed by lines using formal address as if mimicking ancient dialogue was a big turn off to little petty me. Artistically, it is poor, “mostly due to the script”, you would say, which in my universe is the spine of any production, so it always what gets me. And of course everyone has their core observations and interests, I am not a sucker for digital effects reviews for instance, I do not even have the background to say much about it. But I can talk about aesthetics non stop, for instance. And I will get there.

But before, let's talk about the greek gods. In ancient times, the gods were represented as these deeply human figures in mythology. They had our virtues and addictions. And that’s precisely what was so amazing about the greek gods. And is also precisely what I missed on Nolan’s Odyssey: there was no sensuality, no corporeality, they’re practically ectoplasmic silhouettes, with the ethereal aesthetic of the roman catholic saints, which makes everything dull. And speaking of dull, Homer’s Odyssey is full of humor. Nolan’s version is tedious.

And then there’s the way Nolan situates the film politically and culturally. In the first act, he introduces a diverse cast: a black Helena that apparently upsets the right people a lot because suddenly they feel misrepresented or underrepresented. What happened to the Diane Kruger white wash representation of it? But nobody was more upset than Elon Musk with the black Helena. This man that has so little, openly expressing how much he needs everybody in this movie to be white, although this will bring no material difference to his life, still, it is all he needs to get by. Billionaire, by the way.

We also had Elliot Page as a warrior, which immediately triggers the anti‑woke USA right wing to attack the movie even before its release, pushing the progressive camp to support it in advance. But the film itself carries a christian moral framework. Nolan’s Odysseu feels guilt, repents, confesses; he’s a man seeking his pardon. Penelope doesn’t exactly absolve him, but she gives him a path toward redemption.

Nolan made a film that provokes the right wing by showing them as the contemporary pagans: the ones with a pre christian morality, who long for a Caesar, who romanticize the empire, who are drawn to the figure of the “pater”, this master of his household and his servants. At the same time, he tells the progressive camp: do not fool yourselves or fall in love with yourselves that fast, because the truth is you operate with a christian morality, because much of what you defend: measuring a society by how it treats its vulnerable, respecting foreigners and the poor, this was founded with christianity, even if you often reject the christian tradition in your hall of affections. And it is true. This interplay between the work and its reception is in fact Nolan’s genius.

Nolan is a curious director, whether you like him or not, he has something that gets people into theaters. He has positioned himself as a relevant filmmaker, and his movies, regardless of taste, generate endless discussion. I always engage with his films, whether to praise or critique. With this release, he demonstrated an impressive command of the cultural machine. He knew exactly how the film would be received and shaped the narrative arcs accordingly, almost as if the film was an artistic intervention, a performance. There’s the work itself, and then the way it will be received. Even his interviews promoting the film are interesting. He compares AI, for example, to a Trojan horse made of glass: we know it’s a Greek gift, we can see the danger inside it, and yet we still open the gates for it.

The movie, the work itself doesn’t appeal to me. Signing the script as “Christopher Nolan and Homero” was...incredibly tacky. Hahaha! Truly unnecessary. Even so, Nolan remains a major director and an interesting public figure. He’s simply not a good screenwriter.

/aug26

Just received a wonderful gift from a good friend of mine. Looking forward to diving into the classics! Thank you JP!

Swords Against Darkness volumes one to five:

Books one to four of The Elric Saga—Elric of Melnibone, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, The Weird of the White Wolf, and The Vanishing Tower:

The March of Muscovy and Suleiman The Magnificent by Harold Lamb:

#Postbox #Fantasy

This review is a Writing Repository original.

Seers in a Broken Season

By Jonathan Olfert – Old Moon Publishing – October 31, 2026 (tentative)

Review by Robin Marx

Ice blankets a once tropical land and Walks-like-a-Rockslide, wooly mammoth warrior of the Blue Ochre People, travels in search of warmer climes and more abundant sources of food. Upon discovering slaughtered whale remains at a small human encampment, he is enraged by the perceived murder of noble cetacean Deep People by vermin-like hominids and immediately rampages through the settlement. Killing the boldest humans with trampling feet and quartz blades attached to his tusks, Walks-like-a-Rockslide scatters the survivors and helps himself to their campfires and clean drinking water. Before long, however, a larger tribe of human whalers advances into the region, bringing with them more threatening weaponry and a sorcerer with uncanny powers. Through magical means, sporadic communication between Walks-like-a-Rockslide and the whalers' sorcerer is established. The mammoth and the humans enter a tentative truce, as both parties want the same thing: food and continued survival. Walks-like-a-Rockslide is abundantly aware that—in the eyes of the humans—he could easily be reclassified from ally to sustenance, but the sorcerer convinces the skeptical mammoth that the humans' more pressing concern is a massive shark lurking just offshore, incessantly harrying their whaling boats. Can their fragile detente survive mutual mistrust, increasing desperation, specters from the past, and dark sorcery?

Marketed as a Stone and Sorcery novella, Seers in a Broken Season is a work of paleofiction set in the early stages of an Ice Age. It's the longest work to date in what author Jonathan Olfert calls the “Broken Season” cycle of stories, an allusion to the collapsing climate. Walks-like-a-Rockslide first debuted in the fifth issue of Old Moon Quarterly, with a subsequent appearance in Issue #8. While Seers in a Broken Season occasionally references events from these earlier short stories (particularly Issue #5's “Together Under the Wing”), but familiarity with them is not essential to enjoy the present novella.

Walks-like-a-Rockslide is a character like no other. While Stone Age stories are not unknown (Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard's first published work was “Spear and Fang,” a Cro-Magnon versus Neanderthal adventure appearing in Weird Tales in 1925), rarely do readers have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a pachyderm. Walks-like-a-Rockslide's physique and capabilities are far separated from the human realm, and present different challenges. His strength and endurance far exceed those of a human, but even a nimble trunk has limitations when it comes to fine manipulation. His eyesight is poor, a fact exacerbated by the previous loss of one eye. Beyond the physical domain, the differences in mindset between mammoth and human are intriguing. The reader understands that the humans are desperately clinging to life in a rapidly deteriorating world, but to Walks-like-a-Rockslide their lives are barely worthy of notice. Miniscule in both stature and importance. Mammoths and their cousins the whales are People, while humans are irritations unworthy of pronouns beyond “it.” “Who counts as a person?” is a central theme running throughout the novella.

The setting of the Broken Season is likewise fascinating. Readers recognize it as a burgeoning Ice Age, but the inhabitants have no idea what is occurring or if the world will ever recover. The apocalypse is well underway, and desperation and distrust are endemic. The Ice Age presented is also a distinctly haunted epoch. In addition to (largely unexplained) ghostly birds, Walks-like-a-Rockslide is repeatedly visited by spectral mammoths, his grandmother (a powerful sorcerer and former matriarch of the Blue Ochre People) chief among them. The bleak terrain and ever-present memento mori lend a unique atmosphere to the narrative.

The core of the story has an almost Spaghetti Western feel. A stranger comes to town, upsetting the established order. Resources are scarce, alliances are continuously formed and discarded, and violence is sudden. Every stranger is a potential threat to be measured up. But even though they're both constantly squinting, Walks-like-a-Rockslide is far less self-possessed and stoic than Clint Eastwood's various gunslingers. The wooly warrior is moody, tempestuous, and frequently sullen. His stage of life as a mammoth beyond “young” is unclear, but in human terms he reads like a teenage boy; powerful and approaching his prime but not yet as confident and decisive a hero as Conan the Cimmerian.

While there is no shortage of reflective moments, Seers in a Broken Season also delivers a considerable amount of action. Kaiju movie fans will doubtless be thrilled by the titanic mammoth versus Megalodon melee, but all the violence throughout the story is visceral and imbued with palpable weight and momentum. Wounds count. They reopen with further exertion. Walks-like-a-Rockslide can't rely on a friendly healer to apply a nonspecific-but-narratively-convenient herbal poultice or frequently even tend to his own wounds with his trunk. Olfert makes it clear that every encounter carries risks, and accumulated injuries up the ante for every further skirmish.

Seers in a Broken Season benefits from both a fascinating protagonist and an intriguing setting, and it feels like both Walks-like-a-Rockslide and the age of the Broken Season retain a great deal of future storytelling potential. Sorcery and violent action abound, but the narrative doesn't neglect atmosphere and the emotional aspect of Walks-like-a-Rockslide's journey. A new bar has been set for Stone and Sorcery adventure.

As of the time of this posting, Seers in a Broken Season is being crowdfunded via a (currently 200% funded) Backerkit campaign. Digital (ePub and PDF) formats are planned, along with a mass-market paperback edition. For completists, bundles are provided that include Seers in a Broken Season along with Walks-like-a-Rockslide's two Old Moon Quarterly appearances. The novella's release is tentatively scheduled for Q4 2026.

#WritingRepositoryOriginal #BookReview #Fantasy #SwordAndSorcery #StoneAndSorcery #Paleofiction #OldMoonQuarterly #SeersInABrokenSeason #JonathanOlfert

That kind of tired is so specific, isn't it? It’s not the heavy, draining kind of exhaustion; it’s that full-body, satisfied ache that comes from being completely consumed by the day.

Spending the entire day moving between trails and glacier waters, sharing meals, sitting around a fire, and watching the sun go down without even thinking about your phone; it pulls you entirely into the present moment.

You’re just in it.

Experiencing that makes the puzzle piece click into place. When you live a life like that, your days are so rich and full that there’s simply no room left for screen time or quick replies. You realize quietness isn't a lack of caring or a sign of distance; it’s just the natural result of living a life that takes every ounce of your energy, presence, and heart.

It’s such a grounding realization to come home tired to your bones, but finally seeing the world from the inside out.

“Some truths don’t unfold slowly. They strike.”

“IF YOU TEXT ME AGAIN I WILL TURN IT INTO THE COPS.”

That was the message. Cold. Blunt. Nothing like the night before. Nothing like the man I thought I knew.

I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t think. I didn’t weigh consequences or remember the order.

My heart moved faster than my mind.

“Why would you do this to me?”

That was my reply.

My last message. My last attempt to understand.

And the second the words left my phone, it hit me.

Not slowly. Not gently. Like a door slamming shut.

It was as if every unanswered question, every confusing moment, every piece of the last few months suddenly snapped into place.

The silence.

The ghosting.

The papers.

The courthouse.

The heart emojis.

The phone call.

The hotel.

The kiss.

All of it aligned into one brutal, truth. This was something he had been planning for months.

This was a setup.

The night at the hotel wasn’t reconciliation. It was bait.

The kiss wasn’t longing. It was leverage.

The heart emojis weren’t affection. They were strategy.

He didn’t come back because he missed me. He came back because he needed something from me.

He needed me to break the order. To respond. To react the way, he knew I would.

With my heart. With my confusion. With the love I still carried for him.

Because that was the evidence. That was the trap. That was the plan.

And I walked straight into it. Not because I was reckless. Not because I was dangerous. Not because I didn’t care. But because I was human. Because I was grieving. Because I was still needed answers.

I remember sitting there, phone in my hand, the world suddenly too sharp. Too bright.Too real.

My chest tightened. My stomach dropped.My mind raced through every moment I had tried so desperately to make sense of.

And now it finally was.

He didn’t want closure. He didn’t want conversation. He didn’t want honesty. He wanted proof. He wanted a violation. He wanted a reason to hand my name to the police and let the system do the rest. He wanted me ruined.

And I had given him exactly what he needed.

I didn’t know then that officers were already on their way. I didn’t know that my life was about to split in two. I didn’t know that everything I believed about him was about to collapse.

All I knew was that the world I had been clinging to was gone. Not slowly. Not quietly. Not in pieces. Gone.

And for the first time since the silence began, the truth stood in front of me.Impossible to ignore.

(NEXT – CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE STORY HE TOLD ABOUT ME)