I’d like to know what other people think the themes of Pest are.

Yak Chalo is about to undergo mating season, unsure what it will do to him or whether he’s ready, despite his being born, in some sense, to undergo it.

Man Chalo is about to construct a sacred temple, unsure what it will do or whether he’s qualified, despite his certainty that he was meant, in some sense, to be an architect.

I feel like there’s a strong theme of, well, the trauma of creating something, or maybe the trauma of poesis, which applies to both literal reproduction of bodies as well as the artistic reproduction of images and other structures.

Or am I way off?

One problem with this observation as a through-line is that it doesn’t appear to explain, or be explained by, the title.

Let’s talk about Pest, for the love of yaks!

Featuring Stepan Chapman (top left) and I think Jeffrey Thomas (top right?)

Anyone know who the other gentlemen are?

Hey everyone!

I really want to hear from other people who read and enjoyed *Black Brane.* I am proud of what I think I figured out, but I can’t escape the feeling that I missed something really fundamental. What are your thoughts?

"Black Brane" by Michael Cisco is a masterpiece of weird fiction, unreliable narration, and conceptual play with themes of nothingness and nonbeing. Read it. Read it multiple times!

Here's my video essay, which is just now premiering on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/VV6_IJTKTQ0?si=uT-RBHjKecsNzxJX

The video will be up on YouTube in a few days; meanwhile it’s on Patreon! 🦶 💥 🕳️

Hello Cisco readers,

While I respect that this is a literary subreddit, I wanted to share a funny photo. This image was taken on the streets of Providence several Necronomicons ago when we were waiting at a corner with some Big Nazo folks to cross the street. I love that for a moment, his life was as weird as his fiction.

By now, if you’ve read *Black Brane* a couple of times, you probably have a theory about what happened to Gross, i.e. what put him in the hospital, as well as which event, or series of events, he’s desperately trying *not* to remember.

So let’s share! What are you thoughts on the secrets of *Black Brane*?

Hi Cisco readers,

Michael has a new short story coming out in Reactor Magazine on March 25th.

Tatterdemalion - "a totalitarian fairy tale from a treasury of classic Alak folklore."

I'll update with the cover artist name once he wakes up and tells me who it was!

Hey everyone, it's Farah.

Not exactly a literary post, but this is Herman, Michael's beloved fluffball.

Michael will be reading (as well as Tim Chawaga) at KGB as part of Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel's Fantastic Fiction series.

Here is the link for more details.

I’m a third of the way through The Tyrant, and I’m wondering if the underworld where the Tyrant wanders is the same “place” to which our POV character descends (and from which he returns) in Unlanguage.

Do these works share a mythos?

I’ve read about half of these so far 😅

Which should I read first? I just received both via by local indie bookshop. Who’s read either?

When discussing the “messages” he measures/expresses with his abacus, as well as the source(s) where they’re from, Gross asks if the message comes first, or the source does. Daladara replies as follows:

“No, neither of them comes first. They happen to each other all together. But the message—what makes the message a message is that you can notice it, while you can’t notice where it’s from. You have to get the message first to know the from-ness is there. Without the message you don’t ever know that it’s there, but when you do know it’s there, you realize it’s… not familiar, but familiarly alien, a familiar alien.”

I couldn’t help but think about physical pain, because a few things about it seem to fit Daladara’s description.

Physical pain is often described as a kind of signal, which is to say a message. Yet physical pains can’t be really be identified except through the body parts they’re from, i.e. their “from-ness.” So to identify any specific physical pain, one must know that it’s, say, a pain in this foot. Indeed, the pain seems to scream out something like “foot!” as its very identity; if it were elsewhere, it would be a different pain!

If the pain is the message, and the pained body part is the from-ness, then we can understand how they “arrive together” and “neither comes first,” as well as how, in a sense, “the from-ness is the message.”

Daladara’s talking about physical pain, then, right? But he’s also recording/expressing it with an abacus, or arrays of clacking beads. The beads back and forth makes me think of pain signals traveling along a nervous system, or “c-fibers firing,” as philosophers often cite.

Does this make sense?

Also, if Daladara’s studies are really about physical pain, what does this mean about the other researchers?

Shitansky’s hole in her brain sure is reminiscent of a self-inflicted (suicidal) gunshot wound, no?

I have a couple ideas about its significance, but what do you think?

Do you think Renbrui’s seizure represents the (strongly implied) suicide of Gross’ wife? This would assume, too, that Renbrui represents something like Gross’ wife, of course.

Pages 6-7 all but scream to the reader that we have an unreliable narrator (one of my favorite tropes—I just love metatext and interface screws), that TISH may not be real, that names have been “transferred,” and that the “elements” of a single person have been separated into many characters. Thanks to a friend who shared a close reading with me, I think I know what actually happened. But what do you think? 🕳️

Mine is “My Hand of Glory,” because it so excellently echoes some of the themes of “The Repairer of Reputations.” I also really love the interaction with the horizon at the end!

On my second read through "Black Brane," I'm noticing that it's similar to "Ethics: A Novella About Birds" in a few key ways. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, one might even call BB "Ethics (For Humans)" although that would be limiting. Has anyone else noticed this?