This collection unearths the stories that run parallel to those of Tom Waits' early songs. They do not retell as much as push the envelope wider, strain the meaning of a few lines, and stretch the place the song occupies so that the river rats and abandoned dogs, crying children on the street and shifty-eyed suits, salesmen with their patter and hobos with their rags, can shoulder out a space. Searching for the American dream and distracted by a promise, a woman tosses pennies into liquor ...

The year is 2045 and over fifty thousand people live on Mars, with more arriving all the time. In this anniversary of the planet's first landing, the Mars Historical Society has chosen to return to the travails of its most famous colonist.Twenty-five years after Jack Errores wrote his dispatches from the surface, the first colonist on Mars disappeared into history. This authoritative version from the Mars Historical Society tells the story of his achievement and ultimate betrayal. A...

This analysis of narcissism and the resultant breakdown of relationships begins with a working definition, includes the myth of Narcissus, as well as its more relevant implications, and makes a detour into the history of narcissism's presentation on American television. Beginning with television's profound penetration into the American home, the project then details the shifting face of narcissism until reality television and the construction of the reality TV celebrity brought the viewing...

After his father died, Tom took the 1971 Impala that his father had bought the day he was born and drifted from one side of the country to the other, grafting limbs on fruit trees but keeping himself unattached. The years were a blur of seasons, and trees he'd nursed to health turned to witches brooms, gone wild on slopes where there had been apples and pears. Now that grafting season has become too dry and he's received word that his mother left a trunk for him before she died, Tom sets o...

Abandoned on Alpha Centauri's second planet, our inadvertent colonists have to contend with monstrous storms, clouds of plastic-eating insects, mysterious animals haunting the coastline, and a thick forbidding jungle hiding a secret. Resilience looks like it might be in short supply as they face a planet which is both more inviting and dangerous than it first appeared.The worst enemy might be themselves, however, and when the rogue AI returns carrying a grim message and an unknown p...

This fourth and last volume of my Narrative in Tom Waits' Songs tells more stories of Waits' later period beginning with the blues, ballad, and experimental bastards of his musical career from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. Released in 2006, Orphans was compiled of songs that extended as far back as Rain Dogs and contained many which had not been previously released. I end the book series with Waits' latest album, Bad as Me, also from Anti-Records in 2011. Bad as Me continues dig...

Remembering my first trip to South America meant going through old photographs, talking to Silvio about what he remembered, and reliving some of those vivid experiences. Although I'd been overseas before, I'd never visited as a guest in a family, and that brought its own delights and pitfalls.Join me as we sit around the family table, run from rabid relatives and friends, and make enduring friendships out of the rough clay of a more than two-month visit. As much a record of family d...

Although it was originally an insult, the Epiphytes had embraced the term. They were each part of a hundred different ecosystems spread throughout the asteroid belt. Resources were running low and the many rocks had been claimed by miners and colonies, but it was their home.Dara was only sixteen, but she'd wanted to escape Garonic as long as she could remember. People both Above and Below were merely counting time, and she didn't want to scrape in the dirt like a miner, grow fresh l...

This guide is meant to assist the student of literature and the creative writer in their understanding of how literary techniques and narrative devices can inform a reader's interaction with text. Each writer, from experts in the craft—like the writers of the stories I use as examples—to the beginner who wants to exercise control over the story they are writing, choses from a series of techniques or strategies that permit or prevent certain stories from being told. This study is an attempt...

Leaving the planet used to be a death sentence, but Jurn returned from the Shadow Squares solar installation with the news of the Corps-caused global disaster. No one was surprised when he disappeared. But he hadn't returned emptyhanded. Hidden deep beneath the skin in his hip, Jurn has smuggled tech which could change everything.He is secretly helped by Denni, a thirty year old trapped by societal judgement in her parents' basement. She had taken on the unenviable task of cleaning ...

They'd never anticipated a battle, and still less that someone would attack them from within, but the colonists of Marée had learned to be resilient. They counted their losses and began to rebuild. The widespread field that remained from the long-ago exploded planet was rich in resources and they were far enough from the inner planets that they felt they could afford to experiment with engineering and biology.The success of the habitats began to be duplicated and even the enclosure—...

This annotated edition of World Brain is meant to stimulate scholars to return to this giant intellect, a writer who, with only microfiche to inspire his understanding of the possibilities of communications technology, imagined a connected and coordinated world sharing a huge knowledge base.Wells was inspired by the needs of a world teetering on the brink of global war, and eagerly met with Stalin and Roosevelt to learn what they knew of the peace process. When he found them without...