Bruce H. McCosar

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  • Conlangs and the Art of Nomenclature

    Constructed languages can add depth to fictional worlds (as Tolkien would agree). Learn to pronounce names in the Cerulean language with the help of the International Phonetic Alphabet.*

    * If your browser doesn’t do Unicode, you might see some strange results here. Just pretend those letters got hit by cosmic rays and mutated.

    People who have beta-read my stories and (unpublished) novels usually comment on the nomenclature, the naming of people, places, and ideas. I suppose this is by contrast. There are an astonishing number of popular books out there where the author just went in and “wrote something that looked alien” or “came up with a fantasy name.” Here are some BAD examples:

    • Keyboard-fu names such as Stndsfrtg, apparently created by button-mashing or scrabble-tiling a few characters together. (Looking at you, Phantom Girl from the planet “Bgtzl.”)
    • Apostrophe-fu, where Ever’yone H’as an A’postrophe.
    • Unicode-fu, where we break out the special characters (especially the German ones, which look cool): Bühánnèk, Rålbjênng.

    In contrast, one of my novels features characters named Tounbaris Deorgh, Margalle Renhaaleon, and Saamet Keldorra. Whether your conscious mind realizes it or not, these share an internal consistency. If I asked which of these two names belongs to a fourth character—A) Naori Benaatrazin or B) K’ronk Gälbklot—most people would immediately recognize that (A) shares features with the existing set. (On the other hand, if oddball K’ronk ever shows up, it would be clear he didn’t belong, which can be an important clue as well. You’ll see an example of that later.)

    The thing is … one can take a guess at how to pronounce Tounbaris without knowing the rules. Deorgh is trickier, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. These names are in Western / Trade / the Cerulean language (a conlang), and since they belong to people of the sea, it is to be expected that there will be regional variations.

    However, I could tell you more …

    • Tounbaris /tuːn.ˈbɑr.ɪs/ “Bell Ringer” is a fortunate name for sea folk, as it means the turn of the hourglass and represents hope for the future.
    • Deorgh /dɛ.ˈoʁ/ “South” tells us his people came from the cooler lands down south. We might also call him Toun the Southerner. (By the way, that /ʁ/ is the famous “French R”, not the /r/ from Spanish or the /ɹ/ from English. Islanders spell it using the glyphs for R + GG when it occurs at the end of a word.)

    Now, some magic happened between those / / marks above. That’s called the International Phonetic Alphabet. (I use it a lot, so much I wrote a few Python scripts to make typing it in easier.) Once you know how to use it, it not only makes learning a new language easier, it makes constructing languages more consistent as well.

    But I had additional help—The Language Construction Kit. (Available as a free website, but I have the book, which is more detailed.) Beyond that, I had experience: over the years, I’ve studied Spanish, French, German, Latin, and Japanese as well.* Accidentally, I became an amateur linguist; from there it was a very short path to creating my own languages.

    * Studied: does NOT imply I can speak these language fluently. I can read the first, guess at the next three, and identify a few minor features in the last.

    Follow me for a short while. I’m going to teach you to talk like an Islander. By example!

    Vowels

    You may have noticed only certain combinations of vowels occur in the names above. That’s because there are only ten possibilities. Unlike in English, they only ever have one possible spelling.

    • Short vowels a /a/, e /ɛ/, i /ɪ/, o /o/, and u /ʊ/. You can simulate these in English with “bat, bet, bit, boat, book.”
    • Long vowels such as aa /aː/, ei /eː/, ii /iː/, au /ɔː/, and ou /uː/. The only odd one there is the “au” as in “caught” (which might be different for you, depending on your dialect of English). Also, this is the Spanish / French / German / basically every language except English /i/ sound as in “bee.”
    • There are also a few diphthongs, ai as in “Hi!”, aou as in “How?”, iou as in “Hue”, and eiy as in “Hey!”
    • There’s one more vowel sound, /ə/, which we will meet below in special circumstances.

    The Sound of Cerulean

    Though I never state these rules in any story I write, they’re present, and determine what a valid word looks and sounds like. Now we come to the examples! All of these are proper names.

    Doubled consonant + E

    If e occurs in the situation above, it takes the sound /ə/ (“uh”, the Schwa sound); the consonant is pronounced in both syllables.

    • Mol /mol/, but Molle /ˈmol.lə/
    • Hanesa /hɑ.ˈnɛ.sə/, but Hanneskeiyn /hɑn.nəs.ˈkeɪn/

    Final E or A

    At the end of a word, final e or a are always pronounced /ə/. If there are two preceding consonants, they always get split between syllables.

    • Hanesa /hɑ.ˈnɛ.sə/
    • Temre /ˈtɛm.rə/

    This excludes single consonants that are represented as a digraph, e.g. sh = /ʃ/:

    • Cortaashe /kor.ˈtɑː.ʃə/, but NOT /kor.ˈtɑːs.hə/*

    * Which brings up an interesting issue. Cerulean writes our “SH” sound as a single glyph. Just like the other letters, it can be doubled. Fortunately, words like Lashshe /ˈlɑʃ.ʃə/ are rare, and when written in a story, would probably just be Anglicised to Lashe. (You do have to think of these intersections and exceptions when you’re designing a language.)

    Final I or U

    In contrast to the rule above, the short vowels i or u at the end of a word become /i/ and /u/. (Note these are NOT the same as the long vowels ii /iː/ and ou /uː/.)

    • Silatouri /sɪ.lɑ.ˈtuː.ri/
    • Farradainu /fɑr.rɑ.ˈdɑɪ.nu/

    Test Your Transliteration Skills!

    Below are five common names from Earth. Assuming the consonants are the same, translate these into the form they would appear in Cerulean. There may be more than one correct answer, but warning: some of these names may be impossible to carry over without an alteration.

    1. Daisy
    2. Dianne
    3. Delia
    4. Doug
    5. Doyle

    (Answers)

    1. Daisy → Deizi, Deiysi, etc. Here the “ai” in English is NOT pronounced like the ai /ɑɪ/ of Cerulean, but instead like ei.
    2. Dianne → Dayan or Daian. Notice that “Diana” would be Dayanne (and is more likely to be a real Islander name).
    3. Delia → Diliya. Shortening it to Dilia would make it read more like “Dilya”, and since the letter combination “ia” occurs so rarely, an Islander might choose that spelling instead.
    4. Oof. Tough one. There’s no “u as in but” sound, /ʌ/. I hate to say poor old Doug might be Dog in Cerulean, but … maybe Daug? (Ironically, the second one is pronounced similar to “dog.”)
    5. Cerulean doesn’t have an “oy” diphthong. They could simulate it with Doyle → Doyel, but it would read more like “doe-yell.”

    Did you notice … ?

    All of these names look foreign. One might expect Gaumfalle, Saisherra, and Nadraglein, but “Deizi” doesn’t seem to fit, even though it doesn’t break any rules.

    That’s the power of creating a language behind the scenes.

    That’s It! And Disclaimers

    A relatively short one, today. As this blog goes on, I plan to put more articles on here about my writing, world building, and other topics such as realistic science in speculative fiction. Meanwhile …

    Opinions presented here are entirely my own. Hopefully I provided proper attribution / links to everything I cited in the article; if I didn’t, please let me know and I’ll correct this post. At any rate, just because I linked somewhere, it doesn’t mean they had any input into this article. The words and opinions are all mine.

    Like my blog? Great! I don’t collect emails or tips. Do me a solid and donate to The Trevor Project. I was a teacher for twenty years, and I know there were times that the one kind word I said made all the difference.

    It’s a travesty the world has gotten as terrible as it has, and I wish doing my job hadn’t become impossible to bear.

    One day I’ll have to write about that, too.

  • Profile: Adventitious
    Adventitious #5 cover (art by Amuri Morris)

    Profile: Adventitious

    This article is part of my Recommended Reading profile series, originally written and posted 30-September-2026.

    Summary

    This year, from out of nowhere, a new speculative fiction magazine appeared on the scene with a clear editorial vision:

    Adventitious hopes to be an intelligently mischievous literary magazine for the curious and unclassifiable.

    —”About Adventitious“

    Adventitious has lived up to that promise, and more.

    Why Adventitious?

    This is my second major recommendation (after Kaleidotrope). When I choose to profile a magazine or publisher here, it is strictly my choice, a volunteer effort on my part. I have put in about ten hours* on this article grand total—not just in writing, but in research—which should tell you how strongly I feel about anything I present on this blog.

    But let’s back up a bit, and see how I came to be at this point.

    * How do I know the grand total five sentences in? Because for non-fiction articles, I first outline, then fill in details, then polish it up—then go back and write the intro, which is the hardest part.

    Bluesky

    I think I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming back into social media. Even today, I refuse to have anything to do with Meta, so when I went in, I made finding alternatives my goal.

    Last Spring, one of my first finds was the Adventitious account on Bluesky (@adventitiouswords.bsky.social). It took some time, but I tracked down the very first time I saw the magazine mentioned: this post by Katherine Tyndall,* promoting her story “Madam Strzyga’s Pagan Pest Control.”

    * That’s the actual post. I scrolled back that far. See? I told you I did a lot of research.

    Katherine Tyndall did a trick in her post that was trending, back then: describing her story in emojis. I’d seen a similar post based on Fusion Fragment #27 . (That an issue I particularly enjoyed. It had her story “Digital Love Spell – 78% Effective”) Funny the things that catch your eye, right?

    Which brings up one of my major points. It’s the small things. Many authors and publishers go on social media, promote their work, and largely get “oh, that’s nice” likes and scroll-bys. That can certainly be discouraging. But every now and then, your post, giveaway, clever take, quote, review, or other effort hits home and attracts a highly vertical reader like me.

    So take heart. We’re out here, looking for the good stuff.

    I got issue #2, ended up intrigued, and set myself a lofty goal: to read every issue of Adventitious ever published up to that point. (Meaning: to go back and try out #1 ). I liked it enough to not only write a review on The StoryGraph, but to sign up for the Patreon. I’ve been a member ever since.

    It’s pretty easy to try for yourself, but as always with my reviews and recommendations, I’ve written a guide to some of the best stories. You’ll see those later in the article. For now, why not mention …

    Free Samples

    Yep. Stories in each issue aren’t released to the general public all at once. Those of us on Patreon get them first. (And by direct subscription, as well. Forgot to mention that.)

    As each month goes on, more stories are released to the public, which is fortunate—I can take you on a real tour later on.

    Eminently Readable

    The site design of Adventitious scales well on a number of different screens, including mobile. Further, the appearance is uncluttered, has no page-blocking popups, and is ad-free. (See below on how to keep it that way, eh?)

    On the Side of Righteousness

    Adventitious has a simple and direct no-AI policy. This is not just for stories; the art is entirely human generated as well.

    I also have a no-AI policy. I try to avoid it as much as I can. It’s a real predicament for small press, as their inbox gets stuffed with pretenders. Trouble is, the garbage machines are set on maximum overdrive right now, filling up the entire internet it seems.

    So I do have to thank Adventitious for taking a stand and holding the line. Editors are suffering for all of our sakes, which brings up …

    Support Small Press

    So in the end, why am I writing this? You know as well as I do that the 21st century, so far, is about taking things away from you while pretending to give you more. We can see the consequences of that erosion in the current state of the news media, mediocre and often misleading articles readable for free, credible work hidden behind paywalls and “We’ve noticed you’re using an ad blocker!” garbage. Small wonder. The internet of 2026 is TRASH compared to, say, 2001. Sites didn’t suddenly get more expensive to run, not by the apparent “one jillion percent” you’d think looking at the sheer number of ads that are forced on you; companies just got greedy.

    Up against that wall are the small presses, fighting the good fight to keep human civilization at least somewhat worthwhile. The big folks probably try to squeeze and extort everything they can out of each one, when they don’t outright suppress and ignore them.*

    Support small press and independent publishers. Find what you love—and do what you can to make sure it’s still there for you when you need it.

    * A good example is when Amazon suddenly stopped selling electronic subscriptions to magazines, leaving a lot of markets in the lurch. Here are two articles about that, if you didn’t know: from Fortune and InsideHook.†

    † Which accidentally proves another of my points. Of the top five links returned when I researched the Amazon impasse above, the two I listed were the only ones that didn’t flap a popup in my face while I was trying to read.

    Selected Works

    Hey! I reviewed all five issues, including the one coming out tomorrow. Caveats:

    1. I limited myself to creating a top three list for each issue.
    2. The three are NOT in order of greatness, but in the order they appear in the EPUB version.
    3. I hate spoilers, so I may be vague if I’m trying hard to step around a big reveal (or my own interpretation of the story).

    In other words, this list is NOT definitive or objective, just subjective opinion. But that’s OK. This is my blog, after all. So after I’ve got done with my part … go out there and find your own favorites, alright?

    Adventitious: Issue One

    Time travel: I read Issue #1 after Issue #2. No TARDIS was involved, I was just late to the party.

    • Recording of Professor Elizabeth Boucher’s Opening Lecture on Death Ages Novels, University of Presque Isle, March 32, 2667 – Stacie Turner. This story and the next one resonate for me as I was a teacher for 20 years. However, this one story coined a term that I still use today to represent this era—”the Death Ages.” I rank this one high for its realistic back-and-forth with the (unheard) audience and the humor.
    • This is Why Magical Realism and Family Tree School Projects Shouldn’t Mix – Abigail Guerrero. Oh, man. The stories I could tell you about school projects. Once upon a time I taught sixth graders about genotypes and phenotypes using the ABO blood groups. One kid (sorry if you’re reading this, but you’re 32 years old now, so you can probably take it) asked me the question “So if my parents are both type O, how am I type A?” To which I replied: well, you know, random mutations occur all the time. (Not an answer, but still true.) So, yeah, I can see myself a bit in this story, on both sides of the equation.
    • The Soundtrack of My Afterlife – P.A. Cornell. By now, surely you’ve heard of this story, by one of my new favorite authors (I recently read The Astronaut Among the Flowers, a collection of her short stories, just based on her recent magazine work.) I will admit: going into this story, I was very skeptical. One of the TV series regarded as the worst of all time is “My Mother the Car” (NBC, 1965 – 1966), and this was in a similar vein. But … no! As I read, this story developed a serious beating heart and a textural vibe built on the music that appears in the story. By the end, I knew I had just finished reading an all-time favorite.

    Adventitious: Issue Two

    This is the issue I read first. Part of my reason for choosing these stories was, looking back months later, I was able to remember most of the plot and key ideas just from the title. One story on this list does very well at that.

    • Madam Strzyga’s Pagan Pest Control – Katharine Tyndall. Here’s one where I have to dodge around spoilers, but I have to admit … if you know what a Strzyga is, and add it to the concept of Pest Control, you may be heading in the right direction. (Interestingly, the same name seems to occur regions other than Poland, with different interpretations. Strega Ital. “Witch”, for example.)
    • Fractal House – Merc Fenn Wolfmoor. Well, here it is. Of all the stories in Adventitious, this is the one I remember the best and usually cite as an example when I’m talking about the magazine. I do love horror, especially the type of story where the tension exists because we KNOW someone is making a stupid decision, sprinting down the tunnel to the worst possible outcome. This story is a “found footage” tale with an interesting twist: the footage apparently will never go away. (Interestingly, the author put together an entire anthology of found footage type fiction on Backerkit, [RECORDED].)
    • The Place of Oblation – Debora L. Davitt. Hint going in? This is a story of alien archaeology, but depends in principle on the word Oblation, “an offering.” I can’t say more, but this one … had a lot of meaning, for me. I’ve been to those ruins many times before.

    Adventitious: Issue Three

    One of the things I like best about Adventitious is that it’s a place I can find stories that have humor. I have no idea why, but in this world where absolutely terrible news drops every fifteen minutes, you’d figure people would want a tiny bit of escape from things that are grim. So here we go!

    • Who Tells Your Story? – Clint Hannah-Lopez. And welcome it was. You can’t tell from the website, but this is the first story that appears in the EPUB version. It was a great way to begin, clever and funny, with a perfect last line, this is an … almost fairy tale?
    • The God of the Leftmost Door – M.R. Robinson. Though this is set in the afterlife, it reminded me of mythologies involving spirits dedicated to a particular object, place, or action. Roman mythology is full of them, for example, Janus, the god of doorways. Well … here’s a spirit dedicated to the leftmost doorway. There are two levels to this story, first the humans passing through, then the resident spirits themselves.
    • Kings_Gambit.exe – Yelena Crane. I was going to make a joke here that this is a horror story, because it’s clearly a future in which personalities can be recreated in a computer but 1) it obviously runs on Windows [the .exe filename] and 2) the code looks like Java.* At any rate, the personalities recreated here are chess champions … forced to play chess over and over again.

    * Not strictly true. One bit of code tests for string equality using ‘==’, which in Java would only be reference equality. In my dream world, this would be Perl. Probably it’s C++, which is tragic in its own way if this is set in the far future.

    Adventitious: Issue Four

    There is a recommendation on this list that has its own, entire backstory. Instead of rehashing it, I’ll direct you to P.A. Cornell’s blog where she discussed the long journey* “A Game of Go” took from its original sale market to publication here in Adventitious.

    * Something like the Odyssey, or maybe even theodicy. Certainly she had to deal with “the idiocy.”

    • A Game of Go – P.A. Cornell. A long time ago, I played Go, a game that has very simple rules but very complex play. This story uses the different moves and strategies in Go as a scaffold, but you absolutely do not have to know how to play to understand the story.
    • How to Lose to Death – Priya Sridhar. Another story with some humor, in the unusual form of a list. I do wonder what Death’s favorite shots are. (I’m going to place a bet on Brennivin.)
    • Saul & Noah’s Hot Bouleutophagy Summer – Elijah J. Mears. This title really confused me at first. I knew the root words –phagy (eating of) and guessed a derivative of boletus (mushroom) for the first part. Wrong! Little did I know that the Fiendish Doctor Internet had invented a new word based on the Greek bouleutés (politician). You can probably do the addition from this point and see where this story is going.

    Adventitious: Issue Five

    If I timed this right, the new issue of Adventitious will land tomorrow, 1-October-2026. Most of the stories recommended below won’t be on public view for a while. But you know what? You can subscribe or buy the issue. (It’s even available on Weightless Books.)

    • How to Understand Each Other – Emmie Christie. A think that I like to find are stories that are new, but read like fables. This one? It starts off in a strange place, but as you read, the details filter in, until suddenly you understand what the fable is all about.
    • The Gorilla Fighters Under Texas, or: Derek King, Age 8, Shares His Take on the Salvadoran Civil War With Classmates at Sam Houston Elementary Based on a Viewing of ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings on January 19, 1988 (Confederate Heroes Day) – Chris Baker. Normally I get by with a few seriously obscure references, but today I’m going for the record. This story reminded me of the old Dirk McGirk stories that appeared in Crazy magazine from time to time. (Sadly, I can’t find scans of any of those to share, but they were just as hilarious as this story.)
    • New Game Plus – Abhijeet Sathe. Maybe it’s a sign of the times, but a whole lot of stories lately seem to focus on the afterlife. This one, though: there might be a cognitive barrier for some older readers to overcome. If you’ve played video games before, just skip over what I’m about to say to the dal segno mark (𝄋). Some video games are like stories, and as you play through them, your character may even earn points for upgrades along the way, getting stronger with time. Once the story is over, then what? For additional challenge, there might be an option called New Game+, which lets you start the story over—but in a harder mode, using the upgraded character. Anyway: 𝄋 Some of us who play games like to get stuck in the character design screen for a few hours before even starting. Then we play for a while, dislike our build, think of something better, and start over again anyway. (Don’t hate. That’s how I ended up being my favorite character of all time, FemShep from Mass Effect.) Well, now that I’ve given you all this background, extrapolate: what if the afterlife was something like the character design screen?

    Intelligence File

    Adventitious, being brand new, has a number of hills to climb, friend of friends. First is getting word out about it. Most small press editors have another job, so have to squeeze in promotions between their other obligations. Fans can help get the word out there, and I hope, once you try the magazine, that will include you.

    For Readers

    What the—? Oh, the indignity. All of these great stories, and never nominated for a Hugo award. Wait. This just in …

    Oh, right. They just started in 2026.

    Let’s get them on the ballot next year, eh? It’s about time for new contenders to step into the ring. I think there’s enough award-worthy material in here to break through.

    Reviews? Well, Adventitious has a few listed, but even Locus has only reviewed them twice, as of this writing. Even if you can’t subscribe, you can still help by getting the word out there.

    For Authors

    In my own writing work, I’ve aggregated data for 93 fiction markets* that I’m interested in submitting to. (Sources: Duotrope, The Submission Grinder, Chill Subs.†) The stats below were current as of 28-Sept-2026.

    * Not counting submission calls for anthologies. I have about 20 of those listed, all the way out to Feb 2027.

    † Chill Subs has no worthwhile data for Adventitious. Puzzling. Not uncommon, but puzzling.

    • Favorite Factor: 195, comparable to DreamForge among author follows and submissions. (Rank 53 out of 93).
    • Acceptance Rate: 7.51%, comparable to Tales to Terrify. (Rank 65 out of 77 in terms of difficulty, e.g. Interzone is at 1 out of 97 with a rate of 0.15%.) Caution! This stat is misleading, see below.)
    • Lag: 17.0 days, comparable to Fusion Fragment (Rank 23 out of 97 in terms of getting responses back to authors, so in the top 25%).
    • Submissions: One of the few SF/F/H markets on Duosoma (as opposed to Moksha or Submittable).

    A Warning About Acceptance Percentages

    The math on those just doesn’t work out. Every time submissions are open, there’s usually a cap, currently at 300. Bimonthly issues of adventitious have averaged 12.75 stories each. Dividing 12.75 / 300 gives us 4.25%, not the stated 7.51%.

    A lot of assumptions are in play here, the first being total knowledge. Nope. These stats come from voluntary reporting of submissions and from completed reports. Only people savvy enough to log submissions end up being counted.

    Plus, limiting the pool to 300 has traditionally resulted in the cap only lasting a few hours. Chances are, the ones waiting at the gates, story in hand, were the serious writers. (Goofballs turning in AI slop, I’d guess, just spam off a hundred submissions at every open market as soon as they’re finished turning out the latest batch, like virus particles exploding out of infected cells.)

    That’s It! And Disclaimers

    Well, you’ve survived another one. (Assuming you got this far. If you’re not reading this, disregard.)

    Opinions presented here are entirely my own. Hopefully I provided proper attribution / links to everything I cited in the article; if I didn’t, please let me know and I’ll correct this post. At any rate, just because I linked somewhere, it doesn’t mean they had any input into this article. The words and opinions are all mine.

    One idea that spans religions is “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” I don’t take tips or collect names for an email list. I made sure my site wouldn’t be the kind of place where you start reading, and five seconds later some screen-obstructing garbage pops up to pester you with something. If you appreciate my work, try donating to one of the following charities. Each of these has very personal meaning for me.

    Failing that, well, money isn’t everything. I personally think the unemployment rate is a lot higher than they say—they’re cooking the numbers to make it look like the economy isn’t in false vacuum. Support each other in other ways. The billionaires want you sedated, divided, numbed, submissive. Even Neanderthals took care of the weakest members of their society. Do better.

  • Meet the Family

    Being biracial means we have to have this discussion at some point. Welcome to living with Colorism.

    So, my last name has given me trouble for years. McCosar: Seven letters, spelled phonetically. It shouldn’t be any trouble at all. Yet I get people saying things like McCormick, McCosgar, and other things that defy all the laws of spelling and phonics.

    I also get people thinking that it’s Scottish,* what with the “Mc”† on there. Trust me, there’s no Isle of Cosar or Clan Cosar. It’s a case of mistaken identity, you might say.

    And that’s the issue. They look at me, and people who might be offended if someone judged them by the color of their skin … judge me by the color of my skin. I wind up having to prove who I am. It’s a struggle that a lot of people like me go through.

    * Though, like the Scots, my tribe certainly had to deal with our version of the Clearances—the Trail of Tears.

    † Did you know? In old, printed versions of address books—the kind you had to fill in by hand—”Mc” was its own letter of the alphabet. The sections would go { .. K, L, Mc, M, N …}. That’s right! Mc was ahead of all of the rest of the M’s. Thus the way I write my initials: BMC.

    The McCosar-Cornell Side

    My father, Bunnie B. McCosar, was one of thirteen children. This is a family photo, probably taken in 1958, when he was 20 years old. Dad is in the very upper right.
    Dad (upper right) and his family, 1958.

    My Dad had a longstanding interest in genealogy, and traced the family name back to 1820. (I wrote a little about that in my bio.)

    In the foreground, you see my paternal grandmother, Nellie Cornell (McCosar), and my paternal grandfather, Matthew McCosar. Yes, she had 13 children, which you can see here.

    There’s trouble hidden in this picture. The older kids got sent to Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, one of the Indian Boarding Schools you may have heard of. The goal was to “civilize” us by taking away every tie to the tribe.

    For example, at the school, speaking the Muscogee (Creek) Language—or any tribal language, as there were kids from a lot of different tribes there—was strictly forbidden and often resulted in severe punishment. My dad told me:

    • Grandma McCosar (Nellie, above) got caught speaking Creek, and was tied to a radiator overnight. (If you’ve never seen a radiator, it’s pipes heated by steam to warm a room—if she nodded off, it burned her back.)
    • Dad himself was forced to drink Castor Oil when he was caught.
    • His eldest brother and sister remembered the most of the language, but even they started to forget it later in life.

    Coming back to the tribe, how could any of the kids connect with their elders, with their community, with their history? It gets worse.

    The only dictionary of the Creek language, for a while, was one written by missionaries. They only cared about translating the Bible, so a lot of things are just lost, for example: what’s the name of that bright star you see before sunrise or sunset every now and then? Venus, you might say. In Creek? I have no idea. No one bothered to write that name down, and I’ve never been able to find someone who knows.

    The Howard-Houston Side

    My mother, Martha Howard (McCosar) was one of two children. This is a family photo, probably taken in 1943, when she was approximately two years old.
    Mom (as a little girl) with her family, 1943.

    My mother came from rural Georgia—very rural, the foothills of the Appalachians, up in LaFayette, GA. Case in point: she didn’t have indoor plumbing and electricity until the late 1950s. (And that was thanks to TVA.)

    In the photo above, you see my maternal grandfather, Linus Benjamin Howard. I remember him as a warm and funny man who genuinely cared for his family (don’t let the photograph fool you; everyone scowled back then). He had a great sense of humor, and growing up, I think that was the person in the family I felt the greatest connection to.

    Sadly, he smoked. I lost him to a heart attack when I was in middle school. One of the biggest regrets I have is that he never got to meet my wife, because he would have loved her.

    My maternal grandmother, Edith Savannah Houston (later Howard) was from a large family as well. They still hold reunions, but alas, everything they do is through Facebook,* and I refuse to have anything to do with Meta.

    The other kid in the photo is my uncle, Daniel H. Howard, a.k.a. “Uncle Hoyt” (only my side of the family called him Hoyt; everyone else in his life knew him as Dan). He inherited that fun-loving nature from my grandfather, and for years, when I was young, I looked forward to the holidays just so I could see “the tallest man in the world.” (So I thought. He was 6’5″. Practically a giant to a first grader.)

    Sadly, my Uncle died exactly one day before my Mom, in 2014. He had fallen in his house, been left on the floor for a few hours, then died of infected bedsores. Mom, on the other hand, fought a horrifying battle against Alzheimer’s, and eventually died when her body forgot how to swallow.

    * I don’t know why we as a society decided to turn over all control of our social lives to a soulless and predatory corporation.

    The Lost Genealogy

    I mentioned Dad was an amateur genealogist. He traced all four family lines back into the early 1800s. (My oldest documented maternal relative is a man named Stephen Crawford Jones, born in roughly 1790 – 1800 in North Carolina, who later moved to Tennessee.)

    Great work, right?

    I have exactly one copy of it. A paper copy, even though he could easily have sent me the electronic version.

    The problem is … he got dementia as well. I know he kept working on the genealogy for years after he gave me a copy. All of that work is lost, and the story behind that … maybe I’ll write about it one day, but for now, the circumstances are just too tragic and too fresh in my memory.

    Sole Survivor

    So now we come to me. I’m the last living person in the family I grew up with. That doesn’t count relatives I only saw at family reunions; I mean the people who were a significant part of my life. When my Dad passed away last year, I realized a few things:

    • My birthday isn’t even a trivia question anymore. See, in trivia, when someone hears the answer, they’re like “Oh, yeah, that’s right!” Everyone who remembers my birthdays is gone.
    • I hold the memory of things that, as Roy Baty said, will be lost like tears in rain. I know who Ruff was. I remember biking along with Dad while he jogged “the primitive road” (the perimeter road) at MCAS Albany. I’ve heard my mother play piano, which she seldom did as an adult, but never forgot. I remember Uncle Hoyt was the Pongo Honcho. My Aunt Lee made the best kimchi. My grandpa used to grow watermelons on his farm just so he could give them away to neighbors. And so much more.
    • Yeah, and the last thing. Proving who I am.

    Every now and again, when I tell someone my background, I get a confrontation. They judge me by my skin color. Due to my mom, who was very pale, I’m nowhere near as dark as my peers. Yet … I have cousins who are just as biracial as me, and they never get questioned about their identity.

    Colorism, pure and simple. Works both ways. It’s all about exclusion. And while everyone’s out here fighting about who belongs, the people who set all of this in motion no doubt sit back and chuckle. It’s in their interest if we’re divided.

    So gone are the days I could call in what I called The Airstrike.

    One time, working at a school, I mentioned that my father went to an Indian Boarding School. A fellow teacher started giving me the color test above, then told me “Acshually, they prefer to be called Native Americans.”*

    (They do, in a lot of countries other than the U.S. However, the museum here in DC is called The National Museum of the American Indian, the agency that oversees some tribal affairs is the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the great seal of the Muscogee Nation used to say “Muscogee Nation, I.T.”—Indian Territory, which today we call Oklahoma.)

    But of course this person was just being a jerk. Who were they to question me? So I answered that person in the most elegant way possible:

    I got out my cell phone, called up my Dad, and said, “Hey, Dad, this white lady says I’m not Indian and we don’t like being called that. Here she is.”

    That … was an awkward conversation for her.

    That’s It! And Disclaimers

    Opinions expressed in my blog are my own, and although I linked to external sources, the authors of those works played no part in this article’s construction. If any of the links go dead, well, this was written in 2026, and the internet isn’t what it used to be.

    This blog is free of ads, doesn’t beg you for an email address, and doesn’t require you to subscribe. Enjoy. If you’re like me, you’re probably sick of things popping up in your face when you’re trying to read. Neither do I take tips. Want to do me a solid?

    Well, there’s always reading my work. (When it’s finally published; I’ve got one acceptance scheduled for Winter 2027.) You could also recommend this blog to others. But as far as money goes? Send it to one of the following charities:

  • Review: Caped Crusader

    Short version: This series features a 1940s-era Batman in a film noir version of Gotham City. While it features some excellent storytelling and characterization, it’s not perfect. Some episodes are just plain silly.

    (Part of my Reviews & Recommendations series.)

    I’m not the only person trying to figure out what year Batman: Caped Crusader is set in (CBR has a fine analysis). My own estimate puts it at about 1948. Definitely post-war, but there are no computers (Batman uses file folders to store his case files), and I’ve not seen someone crank up a good Hi-Fi system (neither turntable nor reel-to-reel). Television is new enough that not many people have them in their homes; Bruce Wayne does, but this is still an era when passers-by on the street stopped to watch TV in a storefront window, and most homes only had radio.

    So. A nice period piece! Film noir was popular in the 40s and 50s, so that’s a fitting vibe.

    I wish everything about the series made sense, though.

    My Basis for Comparison

    Caped Crusader is the endproduct of the usual slew of production companies that’s common nowadays, notable among them DC, WB, and Amazon MGM. Translation: many hands on the project, which may explain some of my later issues with the series.

    Yet … one of the executive producers, Bruce Timm, was responsible for the best animated series in the entire DC universe:

    Justice League / Justice League Unlimited

    I hold Justice League up as a masterpiece of the storytelling art. Take for example the “The Savage Time (part 1)” (Season 1, episode 24; decent review on AVclub). At the beginning, the Justice League is coming back from space. Twenty or so minutes later, John Stewart is about to be run over by a giant War Wheel in a 1945 that never should have happened. There are no jarring cuts; everything makes sense, each scene following logically from the first.

    Now compare:

    Justice League had essentially one production company (two different forms of Warner Bros.) and two executive producers.

    Caped Crusader had five production companies and ten executive producers.

    You’ll see how that plays out.

    The Batman Comics

    Of course, the ultimate basis for comparison is the comics. Batman started his run in 1939. The character has also appeared in TV shows, many movies, and a few excellent video games.

    Certainly, that’s a lot of source material. And fans? Many times they have their favorite tropes. The loss of Bruce Wayne’s parents. The Joker as an agent of chaos. The distinctive dark and dangerous look of Gotham City.

    You know, pleasing all of those fans can be difficult work. I think that’s where things went wrong.

    Let’s handle the good parts first:

    There are two seasons of ten episodes each. Season 1 appeared in 2024; Season 2 just came out this year (2026).

    I do hate spoilers, and warning, once I get to the play-by-play in The Episode Minefield (below), there are plenty of them. I will just assume you’re immune at that point, so be warned. Here, though, let me j give you the gist of the BEST storylines, characters, and narrative elements.

    • In Season 1, the Harvey Dent story arc is by far the best. Note that those of you expecting him to show up wearing a half purple / half tan suit and flipping a coin are going to be disappointed. This is a reimagined version, a character we see go from a self-serving, arrogant climber to brutal criminal who barely seems to be in control of himself.
    • In Season 2, the Riddler makes an appearance, but he’s not some monomaniac obsessed with proving himself smarter than Batman. This one, in true noir style, is a criminal so violent he got his name from “riddling” his victims with bullets.
    • Finally we come to the Joker. When this character first appears, it’s throughout many other episodes—always in the final minutes, and always maximum creepy. I called him “The Joker Who Doesn’t Laugh,” and indeed, he doesn’t. Until the very end. This version is probably the apex character of the show, but … ouch, spoilers. One element in the final Season 2 storyline is so silly it took me completely out of the narrative. See below.

    And now … the rest of the story

    So, I started watching this show at the recommendation of my long time friend, Keith Martin (LaFayette, GA). We go way back—7th grade, to be technical—and I count him as one of the world’s experts on movies, television, music, and pop culture. (I’ve hinted he should write a blog, but so far … not yet.)

    I watched these episodes with my wife. Now, keep in mind: she’s not really a comic books person. Occasionally, watching these shows, I was thrilled—”Hey! Look! This is awesome!” Other times … yikes. I was a little embarrassed to have wasted her time in the evening, her free time, when she could have been doing something—anything!—better.

    Here’s my thinking on how the not-so-great episodes happened:

    Too much candy is a bad thing

    All those production companies, all those fans … how can you please them all? Everyone wants a treat. Put this in, put that in. Make mine cherry flavored. Let’s have more candy corn. How about more soda?

    You’re going to be calling Ralph after awhile, and I don’t mean Dibney.

    Simply put, Caped Crusader could have picked and chosen its treats, serving them up elegantly, savoring them as they went by—even innovating in their presentation.

    But then we get “Hey! You have to put Catwoman in!” and “What about the Spectre? The Spectre was totally noir!” and “It’s not Batman unless you put in The Penguin!”

    Better to be silent, and to be thought a fool…

    Some of the choices of characters to feature were questionable. In fact, shoehorning some of them into the series took a character with possible depth and an interesting storyline and turned them into a one-shot caricature. It would have been better to just have saved that character for a (hypothetical) later season, instead of wasting the chance on something inept.*

    * “Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt” was NOT a quote by Mark Twain, but you can learn more in this article on Quote Investigator.

    Reviewers like to talk about three dimensional and two dimensional characters. When Mr. Zero / Mr. Freeze shows up in Season 2, I challenge you to find any line of dialogue he has that is about anything other than “I freeze folks for money and also art and I’m really weird.” That guy could have been replaced with some animatronic pirate out of an amusement park ride and it wouldn’t have mattered.

    Tales of the Really Hard to Believe

    Remember at the beginning how I said they made a believable enough Gotham City setting that people were trying to figure out what year the series was taking place?

    Well. Stand by. Massive spoilers, but also my biggest disappointment of the entire series.

    They spent a lot of time building up the Joker storyline. His character was chilling. His actions menacing. He seemed to be in the process of developing and testing his famous Smylex gas, the stuff that makes people look like Rob Beckett* before they die.

    * Apologies to Rob Beckett, he’s a hilarious comedian, and look! He’s also on WordPress.

    And then … they made the story just ridiculous. Here’s everything that Smylex can do, apparently:

    1. The Joker can inject someone with it. They get a big horrible grin on their face, not a normal grin, but a jaw-cracker. They’re dead.
    2. Joker can somehow precision-time this drug, so that if he wants you to die at exactly midnight on a certain date, you will. How? Anyone in the medical fields knows it’s difficult to determine correct dosage in the first place, and most drug effects take place gradually, over hours.
    3. Now let’s make it worse. The victim dies. Then, later, and ALL AT THE SAME TIME, everyone who died from the injected version suddenly sits up, starts laughing, and burps out a huge cloud of green gas. This includes people who have been killed at different times throughout Season 2, even one person who was frozen solid for most of that time. Think about it: if it was difficult to time the dose that killed them in the first place, how much more impossible was it to have all the “corpse burp” effects go off at once?
    4. Everyone who breathes in the green gas suddenly gets the Huge Fatal Grin of Death, but they don’t die—instead, they turn into a hulking, out-of-control murderer and start chasing everyone else around like Night of the Living Dead.
    5. Then the final bit of idiocy: if they bite someone, that person gets the symptoms from #4 and also goes on a rampage.

    Consider what I just said. The Joker has such technical skill he can make a poison that can A) kill someone with precision timing, B) make the corpse explode with gas with precision timing, then C) release an airborne version of the poison with D) completely different effects that ‘s E) also spread by saliva.

    Some chemical, right? Worse than pop rocks and coke by a longshot.

    So, yeah. Farfetched. Ruined it for me. Then again, I’m a chemist. Bad science is practically a religion on television shows.

    (I guess the Joker couldn’t just do the “huge balloons filled with Smylex over Gotham City,” as that’s been done before.)

    Can I just ask? Why is Batgirl never a thing?

    On a personal note, I loved Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) in the 1966 series. Barbara Gordon has appeared in a lot of Batman media.

    So why is Batgirl as a character so rare?

    Navigate the Episode Minefield!

    Here’s the spoiler-rama, my episode guide, with commentary. If you choose to watch the series, and what I’ve said above makes sense, follow this guide to avoid disappointment, a migraine, or both.

    Two possible Quantum States here: [OK] or [SKIP].

    Season 1

    1. “In Treacherous Waters”—[SKIP] The Penguin as a character is completely wasted here, recast more or less as either Phyllis Diller or Cruella Deville, take your pick by how old you are. Watch her kill her own sons a few minutes into the episode to add gravitas, then later fire a piece of yacht-mounted-artillery for effect and somehow demolish a specific building in the middle of Gotham city in ONE SHOT. No ranging tables, no calculations—just looking through iron-sight type crosshairs set on the back of the gunbarrel.
    2. “…And Be a Villain”—[OK] One of the nice things about the Caped Crusader series is they don’t go out of the way to give villains the clever codenames associated with them. For example, here, the character has a face that can be molded like clay; he is never referred to as Clayface.
    3. “Kiss of the Catwoman”—[SKIP] Catwoman has always deserved better in terms of her movie portrayals. Bluntly, this version is crap, the character and situation unbelievable, the plot probably written on a deadline. This is one of those “bits of candy” elements I was talking about earlier: someone probably pressed for this character to be included as a love interest later on, only to end up with this travesty, better off forgotten.
    4. “The Night of the Hunters”—[OK] The previous episode introduced psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel, better known in popular culture as Harley Quinn. Interestingly, in this telling, she’s not just the Joker’s acolyte or girlfriend; she’s a psychiatrist with a dark secret. That said, nothing is worth going back to that Catwoman episode to see her introduced. Let’s just pretend she sprung from the brow of Dionysus. This episode really shows off the noir elements and sets up the formation of the Batman Task Force, as well as establishes the crooked cops Bullock and Flass as recurring threats.
    5. “The Stress of Her Regard”‘—[OK] Harley Quinn’s character is definitely established here. I think the weirdest bit (repeated later with the Joker) is that this is not the mad, out-of-control Harley well-known across movies and television, but … now she’s someone who talks calmly, methodically, analytically. Some parts of this one are silly, but overall, experiencing this new version of HQ is worth the watch. Special shoutout from my wife: she’s always annoyed when female characters run and fight wearing high heels. At one point Barbara Gordon has to sneak around / trespass inside someone’s mansion—and does the sensible thing, taking off her shoes so the villain isn’t clued in by “tap – tap – tap – tap.” Good thing this isn’t one of those villains that’s always throwing bottles at henchmen, though.
    6. “Night Ride”—[OK] The inclusion of Gentleman Ghost on the villains list for Caped Crusader was a bit bizarre to me at first, but this is the only solidly occult threat in the series. Especially worth your time is the dynamic between Batman and “Pennyworth” (he hasn’t gotten used to calling him Alfred … yet.)
    7. “Moving Target”—[OK] Jim Corrigan as a crooked cop? If you read comics, you might have been startled as I was. His character will return in Season 2, but warning: it’s a real crap-fest. Meanwhile, this episode about hired killers stalking Commissioner Gordon is worthwhile.
    8. “Nocturne”—[OK] There’s a main plotline going here, but the big news is the developing story with Harvey Dent, the prosecutor who’s been getting too close to the crimelord Rupert Thorne. Yes, those of you who know Harvey from the comics, this is the “acid in the face” episode. It sets off the fantastic final two episodes of Season One.
    9. “The Killer Inside Me”—[OK] Writing this, I sometimes regretted deciding on two possible states (“OK” or “SKIP”) and wished I’d incorporated something like “MUST SEE.” This episode is extremely complex, and even though I’ve given out spoilers before, I’m not this time. I’ll just leave you with discussion questions for after you watch. A) Whose fault is it that Harvey Dent ended up becoming so dangerous? B) Has this episode made a case for or against receiving a fair and impartial trial? C) Discuss the parallel between Batman and Harvey Dent’s stories.
    10. “Savage Night”—[OK] I had to admit, about the time I got to the Catwoman episode, I didn’t think I was going to make it this far. This ending is perfect. Plus, this is the first appearance of that guy who’s neither a smoker nor a midnight toker.

    Season One had its silly moments, but established its brand enough to lead us into Season 2. For the most part, that paid off. But you could tell … in the back of the car, the kids wanted candy.

    Season 2

    1. “Brute Force”—[OK] If you don’t mind the silly concept—a chemical that apparently turns one of the usual random disposable mobsters into a super-strong and invulnerable creature similar to Solomon Grundy—this one isn’t too bad. More importantly, this is the start of the Riddler’s story arc. The Joker appears again in a brief scene, hinting at a plotline I had a lot of high hopes for. (Those crashed and burned, see above.)
    2. “Rocket’s Red Glare”—[SKIP] This could easily be a standalone episode, but not necessarily of this show. More something like the Super Friends. We get a take on Roxy Rocket, who, well, seems to have borrowed a lot of ideas from The Rocketeer. The bit of pseudoscience nonsense in this episode is a new element called “Ultriam,” which is apparently an unlimited power source. You know the type of invention it is: it can somehow be manufactured on an industrial scale, up until the inventor dies and someone burns the blueprints. Then every person in the entire company who knew how to make it suddenly forgets! So I imagine there’s this great huge factory or atomic lab out there, with all this dedicated equipment. Clyde comes in to work one day, after the blueprint has been burned. He looks at the machine he’s been working for years and is like “Huh. What does this do?”
    3. “Deep Cover”—[OK] Batman goes undercover to try to figure out the identity of the new and bloody crime boss of Gotham, the Riddler. This episode has a couple of major and sudden changes in narrative, particularly when Edward Nigma meets up with the disguised Batman and … introduces himself in a rather perfunctory manner.
    4. “The Devil’s Due”—[SKIP] This one was just silly, especially the name of the putative demon. “Barbatos.” Pronounced bar – BAT – os, for people who’ve never heard of the Caribbean, I suppose. Some of you may remember when Batman was a guest on Scooby Doo. Well, here’s the return favor: a Scooby Doo type villain in Batman. Ruh roh!
    5. “The Spectral Hand”—[SKIP] Somehow this episode manages to be as bad as the Catwoman episode from Season One. Worse, actually. Let’s catalog the atrocities: 1) Our old cop-turned-criminal friend Jim Corrigan is back, sentenced to life in prison. 2) He “volunteers” for a medical experiment to reduce his sentence. HOLD ON A MOMENT: When did we decide that performing medical experiments on prisoners was a great idea? That whole concept has a very nasty history in the United States. 3) In the experiment, they’re going to stop his heart and—wait a moment. Kill him? Right in front of a bunch of witnesses? Good thing death row is right around the corner and down a hallway. 4) Oh, wait. They plan on bringing him back, using some suspicious Dr. Frankenstein type equipment that looks more suitable for building a bug zapper that could kill Mothra. 5) He’s dead, Jim! (Or, “You’re dead, Jim!”) but he comes back as a sort of vengeance-obsessed zombie to clear up a backlog of criminals who escaped punishment. I mentioned this character above as an example of too much candy, and here it is, idiocy-flavored. Finally, 6) in other news, the Gordon family lives in a suburb of Gotham with a subway stop RIGHT IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD, like where no subway system in the world is ever built. (Unless this is Earth-NZ, where no one ever invented “zoning.”)
    6. “Sudden Fear”—[OK] This one I marked as OK, but it’s on the borderline. I mean, the central idea is that the bad guy invented a kind of gas that causes lethal levels of fear (you know him in other media as the Scarecrow). My question is, how long would it take Columbo to catch this guy? Probably microseconds. A) He was working on a fear compound with a collaborator, and kept some pretty damning notes; B) he mainly waxed people in his own personal research group, so that if you marked off the victims, only he and his collaborator were left; C) his collaborator was the creepy sort who probably would have wound up on To Catch a Predator anyway, so inevitably would have been the target of an investigation.
    7. “Her Dark Reflection”—[OK] The central concept is a little hard to swallow, but the Riddler has made himself a pest all season, and in this episode, he gets the full-on Inglourious Basterds treatment. I admit, I laughed.
    8. “Zero Hour”—[OK] The one redeeming feature in this episode is Carrie Kelley. In comics, she’s one of the later incarnations of Robin. She already appeared in Season One, Episode 8 (“Nocturne”), but here? She’s the hero this city deserves. The crap part of this episode is the aforementioned Mr. Zero, certainly a waste of the character.
    9. “Dead Before Dawn”—[OK] I am putting the “OK” mark on this one with one huge caveat. I’ve written at length about the Smylex gimmick being ridiculous. Other than that, this strange, quiet version of the Joker is just sinister.
    10. “The Laughing Death”—[OK] Same thing, but in this episode, we add in the equally silly idea that Alfred (occupation: butler) managed to take a blood sample from someone who’d been killed by Smylex and develop an antidote in a manner of hours. Even better, though we only see him working with the B.S. sort of chemistry set people who’ve never done lab work think chemists use, somehow he’s able not only to aerosolize it, to produce INDUSTRIAL QUANTITIES OF THE CURE in a matter of a few hours and load it into a cropduster type plane all by himself.

    In the final analysis…

    Overall, not too bad an effort. Some of it was very worthwhile. The absolutely abysmal, skippable episodes were only five out of a total of twenty episodes—

    Wait a minute. That’s … a 25% fail rate.

    Ouch.

    Caped Crusaders, try to be better than that next time. Of course in the modern streaming environment, even two seasons was a lot to hope for, so …

    Standard operation in the DC universe: wait for the next reboot.

    That’s It! And Disclaimers

    Opinions expressed in my blog are my own, and although works were referenced here, the authors of those works played no part in this article’s construction.

    The great majority of the names mentioned in this article are trademarked, copyrighted, paywalled, gold-plated, guarded by immortal Kung-Fu warriors, whatever. Those names are mentioned here for review purposes only. However: I’m not going to stick in those stupid ® and ™ symbols all over the place, as that’s its own Form of Parody.™ (Though I’ll admit, ® is kind of appropriate for Robin.)

    I don’t take tips or collect names for an email list. Neither did I flap a “subscribe” placard in your face while you were trying to read. If you appreciate my work, try donating to one of the following charities or organizations. This short list was chosen for relevance to this particular article.

    • The ACLU—Because the corruption seen in Gotham City is actually not as scary as reading the news.
    • The Native American Rights Fund—I don’t know about you, but as member of a tribe that was forced to walk the Trail of Tears out to Oklahoma … I see a lot of history repeating itself.
    • The Nature Conservancy—Because even if you save Gotham City, it’s not going to do you any good if the whole rest of the world gets wrecked while you’re busy chasing the Riddler.
  • Why I Don’t Use AI
    Chemistry texts on my bookshelf.

    Why I Don’t Use AI

    Also, why you shouldn’t either.

    We’ve come to the point in the 21st century where argument and debate are dead. When someone has a different view, apparently it’s best to ignore their points and keep on believing the same thing as before … all to fit in with the crowd you’ve identified yourself as belonging to.

    For that reason, this article is not about you. Maybe you agree with me. Great! But if you disagree, well, nothing I say will convince you otherwise. We’ve lost the art of discourse. But that’s not the only art in danger.

    It took me years to become an expert in chemistry, a long process of learning new principles and incorporating them into what I know. Nowadays? Ask an AI. But when the wrong answer comes your way—how would you be able to tell?

    Maybe you want the prestige of being an author or an artist. (You certainly can’t be in it for the money.) Up until AI—just as with chemistry—people had to learn the art themselves. Now? Have an AI do it. Unlike in science, there are no wrong answers, so what could go wrong?

    Theft.

    LLMs don’t sprout out of the forehead of Zeus fully formed. Someone has to feed them while they grow up. Most often, that’s with someone else’s work. Something human generated.

    Oh, but there’s worse.

    AI Steals Your Birthright

    Storytelling and art are ancient pursuits (Van Pelt, 2018), predating written language. Your ancestors had the ability to create worlds with word and image; people could experience these works directly, in their own minds, just by viewing or listening.

    Now? Literacy rates are falling (Kahloon, 2025), and fewer people are reading for fun (Lee, 2025). As a former educator, I can tell you a lot of that is the fault of the U.S. education system (but that’s another article entirely).

    Editors certainly notice this. Many are drowning in a sea of wanna-be’s and fake-be’s, their submission portals clogged with what people have begun to call “AI Slop.” (One of the most notable examples is when Clarkesworld was forced to shut down submissions: Dixit, 2023.)

    Yet there’s one more victim: just as in school, copying someone’s homework doesn’t make you smarter. It just makes you a bigger fake, and a weak one at that (Daniels, 2026). Remember how I said education was already failing? AI seems to be making everyone who uses it dumber (Hogenboom, 2026)

    So. Use AI to create crappy stories → someone just reads a misleading summary → who cares anymore. Flipping through five second videos replaces everything it means to be human, in the end.

    I don’t think you’ll like living in a world without empathy or connection, but what do I know. Maybe creating dystopias has gone from literary art to performance art.

    AI Devalues Human Work

    When generative AI first came out, some people hailed it as the democratization of creativity. Well. By “some people”, I mean the tech barons who forced that idea out there (Merchant, 2024).

    For writers and artists nowadays? (The real ones, I mean. In this blog, I refer to the posers as “people who use LLMs to create text” or “people who use LLMs to create images.”) Generative AI is an existential threat. Why bother finding a cover artist for that brand new fake novel you just almost-wrote? Just mutter a few words into the Theft-O-Matic 2026 and off we go.

    Translation: there are real people on the other end of this equation who have dedicated a substantial portion of their lives to attaining some form of expertise.* Replacing them with a third-rate magic wish box devalues the entire human experience.

    * Notice I didn’t say talent. Becoming an expert merely requires work. A lot of it (Cherry, 2022). That’s what’s being devalued here, in the end.

    AI is a Toxic Industry

    Oddly, this is the one thing that people seem to agree on. Few articles really outline the erosion of the human mind that generative AI causes, but with data centers whirring away in neighborhoods (Yañez-Barnuevo, 2026), using up all the water and electricity (Berreby, 2024), causing disruptions to the electrical grid nationwide (Wilder, 2026)—people have noticed! (NEA, 2025)

    AI is an Investment Bubble

    Way back, I used to be in the stock market. About 1999, when the web really took off, people started saying insane things. Some claimed this was the “new economy” and that “stock prices will only go up, forever!”

    I got out of there as soon as I heard the nonsense.

    Yeah, it was a bubble. The Dotcom Bubble, it’s called now (International Banker, 2021).

    Fortunately, we’ve learned better since then. In fact—

    Oh, wait. This just coming in. Let’s see.

    Whoops.

    An ugly theme from the Dotcom Bubble resurfaced, a sort of circular Ponzi scheme—more of a rubber band tying two things together than a pyramid. Company A invests in company B, company B builds data centers and of course buys chips from Company A (Charoenwong et. al., 2026). Hey, free markets? Where are the consumers in all of this? Where’s the demand?

    There’s no demand. It’s all being shoved down our throat. You’ve seen it. Everyone has.

    As a teacher, I do like to give out the occasional bit of homework. Compare and contrast modern AI companies / modern chipmakers with “Flip that House” fraud (FBI, 2019). Person A sells the house to person B, who they know. Using a fake appraisal, B gets a huge loan (let’s just call these “investors” here). B takes a cut and pays out A.

    The bank (“investors”) is left only with foreclosure proceedings to get its money back.

    The bank? Well, that’s the economy in this hypothetical situation.

    Us.

    Oh, but AI can save companies so much money—by firing workers! Wait, no it can’t (Green, 2026).

    Ultimately, it’s just the same old crowd from the Dotcom years, patting themselves on the back for being brilliant, trying to corner the market on something nobody really should want. For investors, well, they’re not too big on actual math (Rogelberg, 2026).

    Conclusion

    What did I say at the beginning? You already knew my conclusion. People who disagreed just heard Charlie Brown’s teacher talking the entire time (“Waa-WAA-waaa”) if they read this far at all.

    This is my personal statement. I don’t use AI. I refuse to support the sort of fakes who use AI. And I only have one regret:

    I read a lot of independent press. I rely on editors to screen out the AI slop for me. I also don’t trust “AI detectors.”

    That means, as always, some poor human has to pay the price for the poor decisions of another.

    References

    Readers in the year 2026 should be amazed that at one point, you could go to a website without being bombarded by ads. Information once flowed freely. Why did hosting web pages suddenly get so much more expensive?

    It didn’t. The secret answer there is “greed.”

    At any rate, none of the following articles were paywalled at the time this post was written (5-Sept-2026).

    —

    Berreby, David. “As Use of A.I. Soars, So Does the Energy and Water It Requires.” Yale E360, Yale School of the Environment, 6 Feb. 2024, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Braga, Michael. “‘Flip That House’ Fraud COST Billions.” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 19 July 2009, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Charoenwong, Ben et. al. “Are We in an AI Bubble?” INSEAD Knowledge, 23 Feb. 2026, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Cherry, Kendra. “How Hard Is It to Become an Expert at Something?” Verywell Mind, 29 Mar. 2022, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Daniels, Lauren Elise. “An Editor on Generative AI: The Tool That Blunts the User.” Ruadán Books, 31 Aug. 2026, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Dixit, Pranav. “A Sci-Fi Magazine Was Flooded By AI-Written Submissions.” BuzzFeed News, 23 Feb. 2023, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    FBI = “Illegal Property Flipping” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2019, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Green, Jemma. “AI Costs More Than The People It Replaced.” Forbes, 2 July 2026, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Hogenboom, Melissa. “AI Chatbots Could Be Making You Stupider.” Bbc.Com, BBC, 20 Apr. 2026, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    International Banker. “The Dotcom Bubble Burst (2000).” International Banker, 29 Sept. 2021, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026. [I hate when no author is given for articles. Seems a little like theft in and of itself. On the other hand, who ever thought that I’d be citing a publication called “International Banker”?]

    Kahloon, Idrees. “America is Sliding Toward Illiteracy.” The Atlantic, 14 Oct. 2025, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Lee, Benjamin. “‘Deeply Concerning’: Reading for Fun in the US Has Fallen by 40%, New Study Says.” The Guardian, 20 Aug. 2025, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026. [Support the Guardian, by the way. They’re one of the last reliable sources of news in the world.]

    Merchant, Brian. “AI Is Not ‘Democratizing Creativity.’ It’s Doing the Opposite.” Blood in the Machine, 2024, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    NEA = National Education Association. “Environmental Impact of AI | NEA.” Nea.Org, 2025, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Rogelberg, Sasha. “Top Economist Warns That the AI Math Doesn’t Make Sense: ‘Profits Are Currently Being Funded by Investors Rather than Earned from Customers.’” Fortune, 10 Aug. 2026, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Van Pelt, Jennifer. “The History of Storytelling.” Words Alive, 5 Sept. 2018, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Wilder, Drew. “How Loudoun County Data Centers Are Linked to Power Flickering across Half the U.S..” NBC4 Washington, 24 July 2026, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    Yañez-Barnuevo, Miguel. “Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers.” Eesi.Org, 2026, direct link. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

    —

    Also, search engines, I realize you’re impacted by this sort of dumbing-down as well, but please, don’t show me Reddit. I’d rather cite the proceedings of the Salem Witch Trials or the nearest convenient Ouija board. I also won’t cite the Washington Post, which used to be better.

    That’s It! And Disclaimers

    Take any point I made in this article. We exist in a Dirac Sea of opinion. Someone, somewhere, will say the exact opposite. One difference, though: they’re wrong 😉

    Opinions expressed in my blog are my own, and although works were referenced here, the authors of those works played no part in this article’s construction. Especially important is that I did my own research. I didn’t rely on some Great Crap Machine.

    I don’t take tips or collect names for an email list. If you appreciate my work, try donating to one of the following charities or organizations. This short list was chosen for relevance to this particular article.

    • The Small Press or Independent Publisher of your choice. Here are the people on the front lines of keeping it real.
    • Your LOCAL transgender rights advocacy / support group. Long ago someone in my old church said every time you cuss, the Devil smiles. Well, billionaires funded the Anti-Trans movement. Every time you worry about who’s going into what bathroom, they’re smiling because they’ve bankrupted you, taken away the good jobs, destroyed the environment, helped annihilate civil rights, and kept you from owning a home. And you didn’t notice.
    • Join the fight against data centers. You have no hope of succeeding at the national level, that should be clear for right now. Go local.
  • Profile: Kaleidotrope
    Kaleidotrope, Summer 2026. Cover art by Brian Malachy Quinn.

    Profile: Kaleidotrope

    This article is part of my Recommended Reading profile series, originally written and posted 1-Sept-2026.

    Summary

    Kaleidotrope reads at times like a fable, a dream, a prediction. Each issue generates a consistent sense of wonder and surprise. I think if independent speculative fiction were a small town, this would be the town square.

    Find it at: Kaleidotrope.

    • Genres: Eclectic across speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy, horror.
    • Content: Short fiction and poetry.
    • Publication Frequency: Quarterly.
    • Cost: Free, even including an extensive archive going back to 2012.

    If you find you like Kaleidotrope, you should become a supporter on Patreon. That’s the best way to ensure small presses and publishers will continue to exist. Period.

    Why Kaleidotrope?

    A long while back, I left social media entirely. When I came back, one of the first thing I did was try to find 1) new stuff to read and 2) places to submit my work.

    I hadn’t heard of Kaleidotrope. See, for a long time, I was a teacher. No one who hasn’t done it understands how that sort of workday can take everything from you. Once I got my life back, well, you might say I looked for places to live.

    Kaleidotrope (@kaleidotrope.bsky.social) maintains a strong presence on Bluesky, so I ran into them very quickly. After diving into the archives, I definitely put them on my list of places to watch. Flash forward and I’ve been a Patreon supporter since 13-April-2026.

    That got me a LOT of extras. The editor, Fred Coppersmith (@unrealfred.bsky.social) has the dual qualities of being a discerning editor and an observant wit. (Think Oscar Wilde in charge of Amazing Stories, but set in the 21st century.) With Patreon membership you get access to the frequent Kaleidonotes, a behind-the-scenes look at the magazine.

    And that by itself is interesting. Kaleidotrope has been a one-person-operation ever since its founding in 2006. Despite that—or possibly because of that—it’s on par with magazines with dozens of people on the editorial staff and much larger budgets.

    But hey. Enough from me. They have an archive, right? Let’s take a tour and let the magazine speak for itself.

    Selected Works

    Short Stories

    Here are a few of the best stories from recent issues.

    I have to admit my limitations here. I hate spoilers. That will make me very vague in the descriptions at times. Remember the whole idea of what I like—to be surprised. Hard to recommend something and at the same time take that option away.

    1. “A Song in a Minor Scale” by Gunnar De Winter. Had to put this one first; though it’s from the last issue, it’s easily my favorite of all of them. A tale of a girl given the name Lyra, a druid named Braze, and a dragon whose name is likely not Ormir.
    2. “A Family Forged” by Aaron Emmel. Here my spoiler-sense won’t let me say anything, other than that this is one of those stories where you have to read to see how the fictional world works, and how the narrative flows against those boundaries.
    3. “A Life in the Day: with Chris Wheeler, CEO of Tricentennial” by Matt Hornsby. In the vein of Merlin syndrome and the case of Benjamin Button, this is a tale of unusual aging.
    4. “A Tree That Can’t Be Chopped” by Timothy Mudie. Not just a fantasy story, but a self-contained thriller / mystery involving a missing friend and arcane secrets.
    5. “Full Fathom Five” by Gwendolyn Maia Hicks. Go fishing, accidentally net a merrow. (Fantasy folks might recognize this as an Irish name for the merfolk.) If I enjoy a story, a lot of times I will read it out loud, and the cadences of the dialogue perfectly match a soft Irish accent. I went to have a look at their bio, and found, just as I suspected, they’re a bit of a linguist (like me).
    6. “Water Softener People” by EC Dorgan. Yeah, this is the one I was thinking about when I said I don’t do spoilers. It’s an experience, a place you go ← (that was a hint).

    Now let me dive into the archives.

    I owe a lot of my experience with Kaleidotrope to bad traffic. I live in the DMV (District / Maryland / Virginia) area, with some of the most clogged and congested roads in the nation. (I-95, anyone?) Generally my wife and I trade out driving on long trips. During the times I’m in the passenger seat, I like to read.

    Here I have to give Kaleidotrope a LOT of credit for resisting the PDF format. Many times I’m reading on a phone (the same one running Google Maps). Reading the stories in Kaleidotrope there is the perfect web experience, the text conforming to the borders of the screen for easy reading.

    I appreciate that. Earlier this year I had cataract surgery, and there was a time I had terribly disorienting vision issues. Between surgeries, my left eye was farsighted, my right eye nearsighted, and neither could see up close. Putting on reading glasses was hot garbage, as I needed a different magnification for each eye.

    Thus, I got a lesson in the value of publications that make themselves readable to the vision impaired.

    Anyway! Here are some of my favorite stories I’ve found on the road.

    1. “Transits of Other Lands” by Marissa Lingen. As a new writer, you get bombarded with advice. Start the action quickly. Plant that hook. State the motivation immediately. This story has none of that, and that makes it great. Simply put, this is exactly what the title promises—an article on transit systems in other (fictional) lands. About the time I got down to Sorcerer Assisted Teleportation, we were stuck in traffic on I-495 near the Potomac. This story was a fantasy in more than one way at that point.
    2. “The Magician Deletes Her Feed” by Kate Lechler. Kaleidotrope distinguishes itself in being one of the SF/F/H magazines that allows and often features stories with an element of humor. I don’t know why that’s so hard to find. We live in pretty terrible times. Isn’t joy also emotional content? But the spec fic scene is awash in the grim and the apocalyptic. Here’s a nice respite: social media for mages. Delivers everything it promises, including a nice look at the academic / theoretical side of spellcasting.
    3. “Where There’s Magic” by Michelle Ann King. The first line of a story can be a promise of what’s to come. In this case it’s a lead-in to a tale that reads like a fable: “The witch had a favorite saying: where there’s life, there’s magic. There was a second part—where there’s magic, there’s death—but she usually kept that to herself.”

    Poetry

    I’m taking a different tack here. With short fiction, my journey was stochastic; here it’s deliberate. I’m a vertical reader, so I’ve chosen one particular poet to highlight.

    David Kopaska-Merkel recently passed away. According to the poetry archives he appeared in Kaleidotrope ten times. That makes it easy to assemble a top ten list!

    1. “Marbles” (October 2009) [Not Archived. This is from the print-copy version of Kaleidotrope, pre-2012]
    2. “Social Dinosaurs” (Summer 2016)—I have to admit an affinity for this one, as I like crows.
    3. “Dangerous Stuff” (Autumn 2016)
    4. “Even Their Fish” (Winter 2019)—In this and the previous, note the clever word choice and even use of coined words, e.g. effluviated / radio-frequensated. Further down this list you will meet the word Cinderellish.
    5. “Could’ve Been a Gerbil” (Spring 2019)—Read this one immediately. The last three lines were perfect. It’s clear DKM had a fantastic sense of humor.
    6. “Diplomatic Incident” (Spring 2020)
    7. “The Hungry Void” (Autumn 2020)
    8. “Post-Metazoan World” (with Kendall Evans, Summer 2021)
    9. “The Face in the Attic, the Voices in the Walls” (with Kendall Evans, Spring 2024)—I think one of the signature moves of a great poet is, as in gymnastics, “sticking the landing.” Reading through most of these, those final three lines bring the impact.
    10. “The Saucer Men” (Spring 2025)—Easily the best one in my opinion, very relevant to the world we’re living in. Maybe it resonates a bit extra with me, though, as the Saucer Men came to visit my people on three-masted ships, across the Atlantic.

    You might get the idea DKM was a heavy-hitter, and he was, if you read the bio link I provided above. Poetry, particularly in SF, is a tricky business—all the requirements of mainstream, with the additional speculative element. How many of the poems above told a complete story, just from the details in the verse? How many took you to another world, another place?

    Art

    In my opinion, the AI scourge has hit artists far worse than it has writers. I think the most telling thing I learned about the people who use LLMs to create images* is that on some sites, they hide the prompts they use from each other, so that no one will steal their ideas.

    Think about that for a moment.

    * Notice I didn’t call them artists. They’re not.

    That’s the problem, right? The theft of creative effort doesn’t hit home hard enough for them. Collectively, we need to 1) consistently support human artists and 2) consistently reject those who push the LAZY button and claim to be creative.

    Anyway. Did I mention Kaleidotrope has great art? You’ve seen the screen capture above, but check out some of these:

    An interesting bit of digital archaeology: Kaleidotrope started out as a print ‘zine, transitioning to electronic starting in 2012. It looks like the art really didn’t kick off until 2015. That makes sense. Needless to say, a webpage doesn’t require expensive color printing.

    I do miss the days of print magazines, but then I realize, after all the moving around we’ve done, I have exactly zero of them remaining. For a lot of publishers, the move to the web was problematic, but it at least enabled the possibility of building an extensive, accessible archive.

    Intelligence Files

    For Readers

    For Authors

    Time to admit I’m an obsessive stat-herder. In my own writing work, I’ve aggregated data for 77 fiction markets I’m interested in submitting to. (Sources: Duotrope, The Submission Grinder, Chill Subs.) The stats below were current as of 12-Aug-2026.

    • Favorite Factor: 488, comparable to Fusion Fragment among author follows and submissions. (Rank 29 out of 77).
    • Acceptance Rate: 3.41%, comparable to Pseudopod. (Rank 46 out of 77 in terms of difficulty, e.g. Interzone is at 2 out of 77 with a rate of 0.15%.) Caution! This stat is misleading in that it’s only gathered from writers who have the sense to track their submissions and enough professionalism to actually read the guidelines.)
    • Lag: 10.8 days, comparable to Fusion Fragment (Rank 15 out of 77 in terms of getting responses back to authors, so in the top 20%).
    • Submissions: by email during specific reading periods, posted in the Guidelines.

    That’s It! And Disclaimers

    Opinions presented here are entirely my own. Hopefully I provided proper attribution / links to everything I cited in the article; if I didn’t, please let me know and I’ll correct this post.

    I don’t take tips or collect names for an email list. If you appreciate my work, try donating to one of the following charities. Each of these has very personal meaning for me.

  • Reviews & Recommendations
    The place where the magic is made 😉

    Reviews & Recommendations

    These are the rules, and the reasons why.

    Soon I’ll have one of my first recommendations up. Later I’ll start posting reviews. What’s the point?

    I’ve been reading speculative fiction since age 6. Not first grade books, either. I came in knowing how to read, largely thanks to my mom, my grandparents, Sesame Street, and the Electric Company. Then I have to add in Star Trek, which got me interested in space.

    Tally that up and it’s 52 years of experience as a reader.

    You might think, hey, great. But it also means I’ve seen just about everything, and I seek out things that surprise and delight me. When I find them, it’s in my best interest to make sure they keep on coming.

    This is a terrible time for literature, period. The number of people who read for pleasure is down (Smithsonian, August 2026); jerks are using AI to pretend to be authors (and other kinds of creators as well), which floods submission queues with slop; and the economy is frankly the pits, with many people not being able to afford basics, not to mention extras.

    Face it. No one’s going to get rich writing short stories. People like me do it because they have something to say. Editors of small presses and independent magazines struggle just as much, year after year trying to keep afloat and keep making the magic words flow.

    This blog is for people who enjoy my work to come and learn more about it. One of the best ways would be to bring people in to the community I’m part of—the places and people that bring me joy. I think you’ll like the tour.

    So Here are the Rules

    Reviews are a touchy subject at times among authors. Again, presume good intentions. In general, my philosophy is not to point out the bad, but to highlight the good. But here are my guiding principles:

    1. Reviews and Recommendations are never solicited, but choices I make of my own free will. Something to consider: I used up precious writing time (hard to come by, some days) to write the article. Why? Because I seriously thought it was worth it.
    2. A Recommendation highlights the best parts. Think of it as if I’m an editor, assembling a list of things I like, a sort of virtual anthology. What editor goes out of the way to add in stuff they don’t like?
    3. A Review can be really harsh. I mean, it can be glowing and wonderful too, but the gloves come off. I’m a stickler for science and consistent in-world logic. In general, I will only review big projects that can take a hit or two from a minor leaguer like me. My biggest pet peeve is movies and TV shows. I can’t think of any recent show but The Expanse that didn’t get ripped a new one by me at one point or another. (The last one before that was Babylon 5.)

    So that’s it. I try to keep it simple. Hopefully you’ll find it entertaining and informative.

    Support the things you love, right?

  • You Have to Start Somewhere…
    Paris from the top of Tour Montparnasse, 2023.

    You Have to Start Somewhere…

    I resisted the idea of starting an author blog until I actually had something published. Well, now’s the time.

    On 23-Aug-2026, I got my first acceptance. My short story “The Good That Demons Do” (9200 words) is scheduled to appear in the Winter 2027 issue of The Colored Lens.

    Great news!

    So now, I really need this blog. Not merely for self-promotion, but as a place where readers can go to learn more about me and about the stories I create.

    For example:

    “The Good That Demons Do” is set on Taián. Although it’s a fantasy setting, I did a lot of world building. The planet itself orbits an F3V primary, with an orbital period of 2.6419 Earth years. The average temperature there is so high only the south polar region is inhabitable. Around 30° away from the pole, terrible storms blow in from the uninhabitable latitudes. To top it off, this is a young world, only four billion years old; plate tectonics are pretty furious there.

    Ah. Did I mention the sorcerers? And the trade fleets of Calsis? Or the treacherous waters of the Creig Mór, the Sea that Breaks Ships?

    Quite an interesting place. But a story is a story, and no one wants to stop in the middle of a sword fight or demonic invocation for a quick lesson in geography, history, or culture.

    That’s what this blog is for. The stories behind the stories.

    Also I’ll throw in some reading recommendations, the now-and-again review. And of course that promotional angle. Every time I’ve got a story coming out, I’ll post about it here. (Embracing optimism, there, since at the moment I only have one.)

    Ah. Why the photo of Paris, above? In a sense that’s where my writing journey began, the place where I turned wanting to write into actual writing. Long story, there. Stick around and you might hear it someday.

    Bienvenue dans mon monde.