INFORMAL IS NORMAL by John M. Floyd Years ago, when I began my career with IBM Corporation, one of the jokes going around was that we didn’t really need mirrors in the building. If employees needed to check their appearance, they just walked up to someone else, stood there face-to-face, straightened their ties or whatever, […]

KILL YOUR DARLINGS by Steven Steinbock

WHEN REAL BAD GUYS TALK by Deborah Elliott-Upton “I didn’t want to hurt them. I only wanted to kill them.” – David Berkowitz a.k.a. The Son of Sam. I occasionally set up shop in my favorite easy chair with a cup of coffee (or a cooler beverage during the summer months) and read bits and […]

NICE CATCH by Rob Lopresti One of the occupational hazards of my job is running into interesting reference books. This week I discovered The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases, edited by Anna Farkas. It’s a fun read, although with any book of its type part of the fun is complaining. On what planet is By golly, […]

The story below, which is to be found in Volume 10 of Burton’s translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, more colloquially known as The Arabian Nights, is sometimes held out as being the oldest fictional murder mystery. Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1820-1881) was himself one of the most renowned […]

RUM-TITTY-TITTY-TUM-TAH-TEE by James Lincoln Warren It has happened to every one of us. It’s one of those common experiences that unites all of humanity in universal experience. It probably has some deep neurological foundation, and might provide profound insight into the very nature of consciousness. If only it weren’t so damn irritating. I’m referring to […]

AUGUST DERLETH and SOLAR PONS by Leigh Lundin Why isn’t the great detective Solar Pons better known? Pons strikes me as the friend you loved in school but were afraid to like too much lest your own popularity suffer. After all, what could Derleth, a North American Midwesterner who’d never been to England know about […]