A couple of months ago, before Putin decided to level Ukrainian cities with his bombs, I wrote a short story for a science fiction collection called The Odin Chronicles, now published by Page & Spine. My protagonist was a man whose home planet had been blown to pieces by a mining company, and he’d been…
Category: Recorded History
February 7, 2001 and 2023
2001 Twenty-one years ago today, I got off a plane at Sea-Tac International Airport as a fresh immigrant to the Unites States. I was exhausted after an almost 24-hour trip with a layover. It was only my second airplane trip ever, and I’d prepared poorly for it. Back in Bucharest, Romania, because I knew I…
Prisoners of Geography
These days, I read in the US news about a possible nuclear war with North Korea, a trade war with China, Mexico, and other countries, an invasion of Venezuela, of all places, and of course the reasserted racism of the right. Never before have I felt the urge to understand what the hell is going…
Journalists Searching for Ioan Timiş, One of the Border People of 1975
At Mişcarea de Rezistență, Marina Constantinoiu and Istvan Deak continue their long investigative series Frontieriştii (The Border People) launched on March 15, 2016 and documenting the atrocities committed against those who tried to cross Romania’s closed borders between 1949 and 1989. In their September 30, 2016 installment—In 1975, State Security Accused the Border Guards of Covering Up…
How to (Not) Kill and Bury Your History
Nobody had died there, an elderly woman from Orşova recently told the journalist. Nobody had died there, it was all legends. “It’s been more than 26 years since the Revolution, and Romania doesn’t remember them anymore. Or doesn’t want to remember,” writes Marina Constantinoiu, the journalist at Mişcarea de Rezistență who, together with her colleague Istvan Deak,…
Yes, but What Did They Sound Like?
When my friend Cristina speaks, I listen. Cristina is both a scientist and an artist, and throughout the years she guided me in learning about the world of science and the world of art. Years ago, she explained to me how the Inca irrigated their terraces in Machu Picchu and Tipon, and later she exposed me to the…
The Art of War
I don’t remember when I bought my copy of The Art of War, but whenever I did, that copy must have been the last one in the store because the front cover is scuffed, yet I bought it anyway. It’s a beautiful book, with dark hardcovers sewn together with red, glossy thread. The words—both in traditional Chinese and English—are printed on cream-colored…
Our Borders: A Scrap of Evidence for the Genocide Story (1988)
When Radu Codrescu (name changed for privacy reasons), the protagonist of Our Borders, told me what he had seen at Orşova in 1982, he was a little concerned that people would not believe his story. Michael Domnitei, who himself had done time for trying to flee Romania in the ‘80s, and who managed to cross the border in…
Muhammad and the Universe
A dozen surprising things gathered from Lesley Hazleton’s book The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad and Discovery Channel’s documentary How the Universe Works.
No Water, No Story
I learned from Robert J. Ray and Jack Remick that a strong novel requires a contended resource base. Something that everybody wants or needs. In my Late Iron Age story, it’s water. Some have it; some had it and lost it. Everybody needs it. Without it, there’s no story. With it, come civilization and the…