Dylan Callens (Page 2)

I had no idea what I was going to write after my first novel, Operation Cosmic Teapot.  I flirted with a number of ideas, including this one, which ended up being a full novel.  The first piece of writing that I did for this book is below.  I wrote it out to get a feel for the world and decided that I liked where the idea was going.  After writing it, I started to outline the novel.  This, which was initially going to be chapter one, was reshuffled into chapter twenty-five.  I kept the bulk of the text but added theRead More →

In my upcoming sci-fi / dystopian novel, Interpretation, dreams play a significant role.  People are controlled by an entity without their knowledge, often being fed dreams at night.  When Carl is free of their control, he is also free to dream on his own. In chapter 11 we learn that Carl is having a recurring dream about his son, Liam.  Unfortunately for Carl, it’s a dream that foreshadows his upcoming struggles. ——————— “Hello!?” Carl yelled into dense fog.  Emptiness caught hold of the word, bouncing his voice all around.  The Doppler Effect forced the pitch lower and lower.  A strangeRead More →

About five years ago my mother sent up a tub full of stuff from when I was a kid.  The tub sat in my garage until recently, when I came across it again and finally started sorting through it.  In this tub was a book of things that I wrote in grade one. I can’t promise that they will be well written.  But then again, I can’t always promise that of my current writing either. I’d also like to point out that my use of periods is pretty amazing.  I now possess that ability with commas.  Pesky friggin’ commas. Enjoy!Read More →

Chapter Title:  On the Politics of Kicking Ass and Taking Names This chapter – oh this chapter.  I had a very difficult time with this chapter.  In the early days of writing the novel, this chapter almost ended the whole effort.  I chalk it up to inexperience because now I would have approached it differently. In this chapter, after God enters from another Bacchanalia, Freud tweaks on crystal meth.  Crystal meth is one of those drugs that I’d love to try but fear, so I don’t.  I watched many, many documentaries on crystal meth all for just a few linesRead More →

Chapter Title:  On the Aesthetics of Guarding One’s Ass How beautiful can it be to guard one’s ass?  I’m not sure.  But it makes me giggle.  In this chapter we’re introduced to the Norse gods Odin, Loki, Thor and Freya.  They basically play their traditional roles from Norse mythology; that is to say, Odin believes himself to be the leader, Loki is a trickster, Thor the strongman, and Freya is beautiful but cunning.  There are only a few caveats to their traditional roles.  First, since the gods are no longer in Asgard, the other three feel that Odin should noRead More →

Chapter Title:  On the Genealogy of Better Beginnings The title of this chapter is taken from Nietzsche’s first essay in The Genealogy of Morals.  At first, I attempted to replicate the entire opening paragraph but that proved to be quite a boring read, so I only took a couple of phrases from it.  I don’t mean that Nietzsche’s work is boring – far from it.  I just mean as a piece of fiction, it didn’t work very well.  At any rate, here is the paragraph from Nietzsche’s work: These English psychologists, who have to be thanked for having made theRead More →

Chapter Title:  On the Nature of Re-Genesis The titles of each chapter are probably my favorite parts of the book.  I can’t remember how they came to be, exactly, but they are meant to poke fun at philosophical treatises.  Each one follows the format:  On the (philosophical term) of (something relevant to the chapter).  I’m not really sure what the nature of re-genesis is, but I do like the sound of it. The first inside joke happens pretty much right away.  I like to try and use numbers that are relevant in some way when I need a date.  InRead More →

When I first set out to write Operation Cosmic Teapot, I did so to entertain myself.  I wanted to write a book that would make me laugh while allowing me to look into a number of philosophies.  OCT was the result.  More recently, I started thinking about writing a reader’s guide because while I did try to layer the book so that it would be amusing to both non-philosophers and philosophers, it occurred to me that maybe some people would like to know just what the heck I mean by one thing or another.  The funny thing is that I’mRead More →

Writers can be a strange breed, including the way that they died.  Here is a shortlist of the most bizarre. 1o.  Tenessee Williams (1911 – 1983) While known for abusing a variety of substances, the one that did him in wasn’t meant to get him high.  Williams choked to death on a plastic cap from eye drops.  The cap lodged in his throat and he was unable to spit it out, apparently due to the vast quantities of drugs in his system.  He could have at least made it an animal figurine, for the sake of irony. 9.  Sir Francis Bacon  (1561 –Read More →

Whether the creators of Robot Chicken, Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, know it or not, their show is a fascinating demonstration of Jacques Derrida’s philosophical theory of deconstruction.  For those that haven’t seen the show, and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t have yet, Robot Chicken is a stop motion comedy sketch that reduces pop culture to its (ahem) finest elements. Deconstruction In short, deconstruction is a form of critical analysis that looks at the hidden meaning in both language and structure.  In this short piece, I’m only dealing with what Derrida calls, “the center” from his lecture, Structure, SignRead More →