S. D. Ramsey

Chaos can be fun!, April 18 2013

If you like your fiction well-peppered with cultural and personal chaos, you are going to enjoy this book. If the notion of a web intelligence manifesting itself through a web-enabled fridge (emoting via fonts) while it shuts down the rest of the Internet excites you, you are going to enjoy this book. And if you can imagine and appreciate the idea of a handwritten version of Twitter, then you are definitely going to enjoy this book.

Mark Rayner turns his considerable satirical talents and sharp sense of humour to our dependence on technology, and the serious and silly (and seriously silly) ways we might react to its loss. As always, the writing is both fun and funny, with an… Read more

The Cure for What Ails You, May 22 2012

Mark A. Rayner and I have a lot in common. I mean, we're both Canadian, we both write speculative fiction, and we...um...well, that is, we both....Hmmm. Okay, so we don't have a whole lot in common, but we do have this--we share a twisted and absurd sense of humour. I'm a regular visitor to [...] aptly advertised as containing "scribblings, squibs, and sundry monkey joys"--or in other words, generalized nonsense. But take note: generalized nonsense of the highest order.

Which brings me to "Pirate Therapy and Other Cures," a collection of short fiction and essays, many of which originally appeared on the blog. The collection is funny, it's absurd, it asks questions you never… Read more

A wild and wacky ride, April 22 2011

I knew I wanted to read this book when I heard the author read from it at WorldCon in Montreal. For one thing, the section he read from was set in a drugstore. Now, my husband is a pharmacist, and believe me, the vast comedic possibilities of drugstores are a gold mine most satire and humour writers seem to miss. The fact that Mark Rayner had recognized this made me respect him instantly. The reading only got better from there, by turns funny, absurd, and poignant, and I knew I wanted to know more.

I wasn't disppointed. This book is not going to be for everyone; you have to be open to the surreal, the absurd, and alarmingly incisive reflections of the corporate world, and be able… Read more