Fiction

The Oracle Vignettes

Demon terrorists, drug warriors, robot butterflies, virtual reality brainwashing, alien television and memetic drugs. All debris of an unfinished novel; The Oracle' is a collection of short science fiction poems written and designed by Tim Parish.

WHILE he was sleeping, Citizen Uccello heard a ‘knocking’ inside his head. Uccello, like all citizens of his day, only had one dream. It consisted of a single pyramid of playing-cards, stacked high and peaceful on a coffee table. But the present knocking shook the image, and the cards collapsed in a heap.

If you take thought as a tangible thing, imagine the clouds of thought hanging about our heads.
Imagine the roof of thought-fog hanging over our cities.
Beginning as a murder mystery the story unravels until it gradually unveils the origin and purpose of an organization so esoteric that it doesn't even have a name.

Lars Yenin is an overworked family man, who never gets enough sleep. When he loses both his job and family, he lies down to sleep and doesn't wake up. The mysterious coma continues for years. Two weeks into the sleep, another man who looks identical to Yenin arrives and takes over Yenin's life. Within a short time, he becomes a world-famous occultist.

This new Yenin never sleeps at all.

Chaz Darf is a sorrowful emigrant whose only enjoyment in life is art. Most of his days are spent smoking cigars on the front steps of the block of units where he lives. Nobody knows anything about his life before he came to Australia.

When Chaz goes missing, and murders of seemingly supernatural circumstances take place, the police are left with only one clue: Chaz's paintings, which clutter up his unit. Every painting is of the same subject: a beautiful but deformed woman. That's not much help, though. What the police need is the help of an expert in the occult --- they go to Lars Yenin.

The Man Who Never Sleeps is Levin A. Diatschenko's first novel, a blend of metaphysics, mystery and science fiction. Since its launch in the Darwin Fringe Festival, followed with its nation-wide distribution, it has attracted an underground following of readers as diverse and individual as the characters in the book.

During the months of August and September, The Man Who Never Sleeps will be released in a serialised form on www.undergrowth.org, featuring new illustrations by the author throughout. Readers will be able to subscribe to a special email list to receive updates when new chapters are uploaded weekly at http://www.undergrowth.org/neversleep.

A preview chapter of the book's prologue is now available. Read the prologue here.

The revolution begins at breakfast!

Reviews 

4:35 PM the end of slavery is approaching for the day. I get in my door about six, that fuck in the apartment next door just gave me that look again. Sit down, contemplate my next move that is obviously related to food. Buy it, cook it, not eat, go to a friend's house and eat their mother's cooking. Someone is at the door, I can hear them marauding out the front of my apartment, the door is open, I shout and Mr. History enters. He sits on the couch, reaches in his bag and pulls out his mix bowl, scissors and a bag of Chiba. Well, a three-course meal has arrived for someone.

The doors slid open at his approach. He squinted as he entered even brighter light. Quickly choosing a reflective wrap-around set, he slipped them on and headed for the entrance. The doors took longer than usual to open as he waited for the automatic debit to his account. Must be a malfunction, he decided. A synthetic voice sounded from above.

by MC DUENDE duende_23 alquimista_24@hotmail.com Her story "Like almost every other family, we were trying to escape the ravages of war. For others the war was just an excuse to do that which they wanted to do a long time ago. But it took us all by surprise nonetheless. The unthinkable had happened. After all, our colony was founded by hippies who themselves were trying to escape Earth's bitter conflicts. They wanted a place where peace could blossom and where they could live a simple natural life- or at least as natural as it gets in a colony that is barely the size of two football fields and is thousand of miles away from Earth.

The future has arrived, but there's something distinctly wrong with it. Robots that were meant to abolish human labour are creating mass unemployment because political systems aren't evolving as fast as our technology. Virtual gaming economies are outstripping the GDP of some small nations, telecommunications breakthroughs have brought us porn on our video phones, and Flash-Mobs roam the urban jungles, manifesting the sublime and shaking consumers from their retail addictions.