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Writer on the southern tip of Africa
Friday, December 14, 2018
Friday, June 29, 2018
Today's Top Literary Dystopian Novels on Amazon
1
The Excavations: A History of the End of the World
by James Whyle
2
Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature
by Pamela Bedore and The Great Courses
3
2054
by JT Lawrence and Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
4
1984
(Modern Classics Series): Big Brother Is Watching You - A Political Sci-Fi Dystopia
by George Orwell
5
The Handmaid's Tale (Vintage Classics)
by Margaret Atwood
6
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
7
The Blackout Boxset: EMP Post Apocalyptic Fiction
by Roger Hayden
8
Annihilation: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy Book 1)
by Jeff VanderMeer
9
The Woman Who Sparked the Greatest Sex Scandal of All Time: (Complete and Unabridged)
by Eli Yaakunah
10
Folsom (The End of Men Book 1)
by Tarryn Fisher and Willow Aster
11
Animal Farm
by George Orwell and Malcolm Bradbury
12
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
13
Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
14
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Saturday, March 3, 2018
SAPPEUR FIJN AND THE COW
LYING ON ARMY beds in
an army tent in the showgrounds in Bloemfontein, they hear the cow: mnooooo.
And fall from their beds, laughing
Nooit, he didn't. He didn't.
He did. He did, ek se. Fijn did it.
Fuck. He must have stood on a
bucket.
Sappeur Fijn is short and stocky
with sly slant eyes and a sailors' swagger. Sappeur Fijn likes to leave the big
generator loose in the back of the Bedford. When Fijn breaks hard at a robot,
the generator rumbles forward under the force of its inertia, and the inertia
of the taxpayers who paid for it, and commits suicide against the cab. When we
unpack for the shows, Sappeur Fijn throws things as far and hard as possible of
the back of the Bedford in the hope that they'll break and the Minori will have
to say, ag nee fokkit man Fijn, wattie fok doen jy.
Sappeur Fijn gets letters which he
claims are from a girl and smirks and sniggers over them before fucking the
tangled gritty pile of pipes which leans up against the water-purification
system. In so far as I fear Sappeur Fijn I believe I should bend over whenever
I see him in a baboon's gesture of sexual submission. Sappeur Fijn is a member of the Engineers, the Genieschool
of the Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag. Sappeur Fijn is a soldier who works night and
day to protect us from the dark ruthless AK-47 bearing terrorists who are
fighting night and day to become voting South Africans like Sappeur Fijn. At
the Bloemfontein showgrounds Sappeur Fijn greases his hair back and drinks and
drinks and offers girls ice-creams in a smarmy deviant unsettling manner which
makes the girls suspicious and scared so that they giggle and refuse the
ice-creams. Then Sappeur Fijn disappears.
The lieutenant is tall and ginger
and worried. He wears a neat ginger moustache and gold-rimmed spectacles. It
worries the lieutenant when Pike and Donaldson give black power salutes when
they drive past black people in the Bedford. The lieutenant is tremendously fit
and worried and proud of his two stars which are a commission from the State
President who had to resign because he lied to the taxpayers who paid for the
lieutenant's training. The lieutenant once smoked a joint at a party at the
university where he became an architect and he enjoys talking to Pike and
Donaldson who are graduate engineers with strange ideas and no rank. It worries
the lieutenant when Pike and Donaldson say they would shoot better if they painted
the State President's face over the faces of the dark cut out monsters they use
as targets on the shooting range.
In Bloemfontein the lieutenant is
worried because the corporal drank a third of a gallon bottle of Tassenburg
which Pike and Donaldson claim they found at a hotdog stand and took the
section into town in the Bedford and drove over a Porche and damaged the
Bedford's bumper. The lieutenant is worried and ginger and scared about what
the major will say when he arrives to inspect the exhibition and finds that the
Bedford is damaged and that the lieutenant has lost Sappeur Fijn. The
lieutenant wants to phone his mother, but he doesn't. He goes round to see the
MPs.
More Sersant, says the lieutenant.
Hey jy iets van Sappeur Fijn gehoor.
O, says the MP sergeant. Daai ou
wattie koei genaai het.
It's already six years ago that
these things happened. In those days they weren't sending soldiers into the
townships. In those days the border was pretty much on the border of the country.
Now the border goes all over the place, sometimes straight through the middle
of families. Which is, I suppose, what civil war is all about.
Sappeur Fijn was charged and found
innocent in a civilian court. I don't know what the charge was. I saw him in
camp afterwards and he told me that his defence when like this:
I was too drunk to get it up, so I
couldn't have fucked the cow.
I heard later that Fijn was killed
in a motor accident in Welkom. I've no idea what happened to the lieutenant,
but the cow gave birth to a roaring monster, half man, half beast, who shrieks
and jabbers over my shoulder when I watch the news on TV.
***
Sappeur Fijn and the Cow was first published in Forces Favourites, TAURUS, 1987.
It was republished in The
Penguin Book of Contemporary South African Short Stories, Penguin Books,
1993
Sunday, February 18, 2018
The Excavations - Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll
25
Uruk at Play
ON THE EVE of the equinox, the Partner gave
Hob a pair of loose trousers and a shirt of fine white cloth and a pair of soft
NanoHide loafers and told him to have fun and be careful and remember that his
chip knew the way home and when Hob had left he addressed himself to the
properties of the stone.
Hob
went out onto the street as the day was fading from the dome in a lurid mockery
of the sunset outside. The lights came on among the trees and cybertabs
appeared about the square and flashed their messages of endorsement for
NektaPop and Grownston Flooring and Ghandi Cottons. The squares were crowded
with youths and girls and older persons also and some were dressed
extravagantly in the costumes of times and peoples past and many were masked. Hob
sat on a bench on the pavement and he watched the people throng about and in
half an hour he counted four who were dressed in imitation of himself as he had
appeared on the tab. The people spoke and laughed and drank at the tables outside
the eating places and it was not long before Hob was noticed for the very normality
of his garb.
Dude,
you look so like that bushman guy.
The
youth who spoke was accompanied by two girls. He had a dark and chiselled face
and he wore the costume of a pirate on the Spanish Main in days of old. He
sported a thin and expressive moustache upon his upper lip and it served to
emphasize the wryness of his smile.
Like
who?
That
bushman guy on the tab. That like, wasted those outsiders. Harvesters. What's
your name? Have some of this.
What
is it?
Hash.
It's like, organic.
Hob
stared at the thin silver cylinder which was offered. A tendril of steam
drifted from it. It carried a sweet peppery fragrance to the perceptive
nostril.
We'll
call him San, said the girl with dark hair. She had a round face and the nails
at the end of her plump fingers were painted red.
Professor
Dzugashvili will be totes impressed.
She
turned to her companion.
He's
super cute. Don't you think?
The
blonde girl nodded and smiled at Hob. A lithe figure with a wide mouth and eyes
like a cat.
Where's
your girlfriend, she said. You must have a girlfriend somewhere.
Her
shirt hung open a little and Hob glimpsed her breast and he saw that her nipple
was pierced with a silver stud.
Don't
stare San, said the dark girl. You'll get warts.
Sorry,
said Hob. He lifted the silver cylinder to his lips as he had seen the youth do
and he inhaled.
Do
you know, said the blonde girl, that it actually means thief? San? It's
actually a Khoi word for thief or vagabond.
They
study anthropology, said the pirate. With Professor Dzugashvili. It's incredibly boring.
Which
are you San, said the blonde girl. Thief, or vagabond?
Vagabond,
said Hob.
Are
you really, said the dark girl.
She
looked at her friend.
I
bet he's an accountant. You are, aren't you, San. A pretty accountant. You work
in logistics. In the fresh produce segment.
Someone,
said the pirate, has to bring in the asparagus. Or what are we to eat with our
Pinot Gris?
What
do you do really, San, said the blonde girl. Do you sit around all day, doing
data capture in a virtual office?
I
work for COOL, said Hob. Why is the ground so far away?
That
would be the hash, said the pirate. Okay, he said. Drink. Who's got units ?
There
came a silence. A little hiatus in the throng and the dark girl sighed.
I have, said Hob.
The
pirate assumed a careful yet hopeful demeanour.
How
many?
I
think… fifteen thousand, said Hob. I'm very thirsty.
The
pirate stared at him.
Fifteen
thousand?
I
think so. Something like that.
Dude,
said the pirate. You're like, the mother lode.
We
like you, San, said the dark girl. We like you a lot.
The
youth led them to a square and they found a table and sat and a waiter came to
them and put menus down.
Who's
paying, he said.
He
is, said the dark haired girl. And she pointed at Hob. He works for COOL.
We
like him, said the blond girl. She smiled at the waiter. I want a double vodka.
Stols. Do you have Stols?
Yes,
said the waiter.
With
cranberry NektaPop
Two
of those, said the dark girl.
And
we'll have beer, said the pirate. Ur Ale.
He
smiled at the dark girl.
Because
Sumerians did it first.
The
waiter took a tablet from his pocket and held it out to Hob.
Chip,
he said.
Hob
put his thump on the flashing square and the tablet beeped and the waiter
looked at it and nodded and went away to get the drinks and the silver cylinder
passed once more about the circle.
You
have to admit, said the pirate, that this is some good shit.
My
name's Cass, said the blonde girl. It's short for Cassandra.
She
leant forward and she smiled and she touched Hob upon his cheek with the backs
of her fingers.
You're
hot, she said. What's your real name?
Who
needs names, said the pirate. On a night like this.
He
looked at Hob.
You
going to the conception?
The
big…
Shindig,
said the youth.
You
have to come with us, San, said Cassandra. It's going to be epic. Come cut a
caper.
I've
never been outside, said the dark girl.
Neither
have I, said blonde Cassandra. It's my first time.
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