Today saw the passing of William Peter Blatty best known as the author of the Exorcist. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the book and the film came to define an era – The … Read More
And Our Star Is Wormwood.
If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix — a clean well lighted place full of sunshine … Read More
Walk in Silence…
Silence is a strange thing, a gooey, sticky substance that sours the longer you keep it inside your mouth, like a gum gone rotten without your being aware. And it carries a contagion: strangely, silence … Read More
Self-Espresso…
‘If you go into the woods at night, by yourself, it’s frightening, isn’t it? You get scared by the slightest noise, the slightest snap of a twig. If you go into the woods with your … Read More
Endure and Survive
I’m pleased to hear that the Last of Us is getting a sequel or more accurately a continuation. It seems to me an appropriate opportunity to examine the considerable influence of the original game. For … Read More
‘Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey.’
I’ve always thought (and it’s just my opinion) that a magazine such as Abridged (if there are magazines like Abridged) needs to be more than the sum of its contents. It has to have a … Read More
It might be true but it’s not what happened…
So this is the first proper post of my ACNI ACES ‘1979’ project. There’s three essays. I know where I want them to go. I’m just not entirely sure of which road they will take. … Read More
Laboratory
In April and May 1979, a large amount of anthrax was accidentally released from a bio-chemical factory (mysteriously named Military Compound 19) in Sverdlovsk, USSR (now Yekaterinburg in Russia) killing over 60 people downwind to the South-East … Read More
Why is it Always December?
After Lethe and Floodland comes ‘Why is always December?’ the third of our (very loose) trilogy exploring oblivion, memory and the fear of losing identity. Why is it always December? interrogates our need to memorialise … Read More
Abridged 0 – 48: Mercury Red
This is the age of the inspirational. We wake up each morning to a torrent of messages on social media informing us that if we ‘be ourselves’ and ‘believe in ourselves’ we can achieve the … Read More