PeterMBall.com

It’s Friday night. If you too are at home, wondering how you’re going to fill in your Friday evening without a working television, I’ll make two short story recommendations:

• In the Lot and In the Air, Lisa Hannet (Clarkesworld)
• The Imogen Effect, Jason Fischer (Faraggo’s Wainscott)

Between them these two stories have clockwork sideshows, minotaur phallus, dirigibles and Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song. And really, does your evening need anything more than that?

When I was fifteen a friend gave me a tape featuring a fair mix of punk bands, including three Misfits tracks (Astro Zombies, I Turned Into a Martian, and something else I can’t remember). I ran the hell out of those three songs, but unfortunately the tape came sans info about who did what so it was about six years before I realised who the Misfits actually were.