He was a brave bastard. He knew it – no longer needed to prove it. He’d learned the trick over the years – at first unconsciously, just by instinct, then more and more through experience. Fear is only strong when it’s behind you, when it still has a chance to strike from the…

Let me begin with a story. A few weeks ago, I submitted an essay to a well-known American publication. The piece explored the digital present — more specifically, the uneasy future in which human creativity may become as unthinkable without machine assistance as, say, sneaker…

I don’t know whether someone told me this or I read it somewhere, but tonight one of those wise-sounding phrases has been spinning around in my head – the kind of thing you’d proudly serve up at a dinner table. It goes like this: “Nothing ages you faster than fulfilled dreams.”…

Chapter one: Deadlock again Rain clouds, dark and puffed-up like turkeys, had been threatening to unleash their wrath on the dreary town all day, but so far had remained all threat and no action, as if to annoy everyone even more. Anne-Firecurl, herself gloomier than even the…