Douglas Lain
Douglas Lain (born 1970 in Memphis, Tennessee) is a fiction writer who has been compared to Philip K. Dick and Pamela Zoline. His first novel, entitled "Billy Moon:1968," is due out from Tor Books.
His stories and novellas might be called interstitial or "slipstream" (a term invented by the cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling). However, his second short story collection Fall Into Time was recently published by the Bizarro publisher Eraserhead Press, and includes the story "Noam Chomsky and the Timebox" about a tech blogger who travels back in time and becomes obsessed with a twenty-two minute period in the Chicago O'Hara Airport on November 16th, 1971, when Noam Chomsky and Terence McKenna nearly met.
Lain is also the author of a the surrealist memoir Pick Your Battle, a book that explores the possibilities involved in urban foraging and psychogeography. Lain self-published this book with funding from Kickstarter.
His novella "Wave of Mutilation" was published by Fantastic Planet Press and was described as a "A dream-pop exploration of modern architecture and the American identity" by the publisher. On the release of this novella Kris Saknussemm compared Lain to J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and Walker Percy, and the novella received an endorsement from Jeffrey Ford. His first novel is due out in 2013 from Tor books. It is the story of Christopher Robin Milne's entirely imaginary involvement with the French Student/Worker Movement of Mai 1968, and will be entitled "Billy Moon: 1968."
Lain is also the host of the podcasts "Diet Soap" and "One Thousand Words." He was the co-author of the Artists and Writers Petition Against the War on Iraq, and was formerly an organizer of protests against the Patriot Act, the bombing of Afghanistan, and the Iraq war. As some kind of Zizekian Communist Lain has written about conspiracy theories including Project Bluebeam.
He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Contents |
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Novella
- "Wave of Mutilation", Fantastic Planet Press (2011)
[edit] Nonfiction
- Pick Your Battle, Funded through Kickstarter (2011)
[edit] Short story collections
- Fall Into Time, Eraserhead Press (2011)
- Last Week's Apocalypse, Night Shade Books (2006)
[edit] External links
- Wave of Mutilation, a novella Eraserhead Press, October 2011
- Pick Your Battle: Your Guide to Urban Foraging, Hollywood Movies, Late Capitalism, and the Communist Alternative (a memoir)
- Fall Into Time, Eraserhead Press, May 2011
- Last Week's Apocalypse, Night Shade Books, 2006
- Douglas Lain's Homepage, the author's official site. Includes his blog, bibliography, and links to some of his stories online.
- Diet Soap Podcast.
- Mahesh Raj Mohan interviews Douglas Lain for Strange Horizons, April 17, 2006
- Diet Soap Podcast #34-Reading of How to Cut Your Life to Pieces, December 2nd, 2009
- One Thousand Words Podcast: Conversations about the history of the Avant Garde
- Douglas Lain at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
[edit] Short stories available online
- Resurfacing Billy,"Futurismic November 2008.
- How to Cut Your Life to Pieces,"Farrago's Wainscot" May 2008.
- A Coffee Cup/Alien Invasion Story, Strange Horizons, 7 February 2005.
- Shopping at the End of the World, Strange Horizons, 22 September 2003.
- The '84 Regress, The Infinite Matrix, 5 May 2003.
- "Identity Is a Construct" (and Other Sentences), Strange Horizons, 14 January 2002.
- Free Speech and the End of the World, Pif Magazine, November 2001.
[edit] Reviews of Douglas Lain's Books
- [1] Review of Pick Your Battle at Red Metaphor, 8 June 2011
- [2] Review of Fall Into Time, 29 August 2011
- [3] Review of Last Week's Apocalypse at "Strange Horizons", 20 February 2006.
