not just a pretty face



Wed 21

Audio: I Should Buy Some Cement



Original story.

Tue 13

When My Next Book Is Out







Tue 15

Four Possible Trumps



  1. Benevolent Dictator Trump




  2. Robber Baron Trump



  3. Capitalizt Trump




  4. Commander-in-Chief Trump




Wed 09

10 Reasons President Trump Won’t Be That Bad

What Max Reckons Like me, you may be feeling a combination of shock, distress, and terror at the news that Donald J. Trump will become the next leader of the world’s largest military and economic superpower.

But it’s all right! It’s all right. It won’t be that bad. I mean, it will be pretty bad. That’s for sure. But we can get through this. To help you through this difficult adjustment period, here are some comfort thoughts:

  1. Many Trump policies range from mutually contradictory to the physically impossible so they can’t all be implemented.

  2. Writers of satire or absurdist comedy need never again be told that their work is too far-fetched.

  3. Reagan was a TV actor with fantastical economic ideas and latent Alzheimer’s and the US came out of that pretty okay.

  4. Exposure of electoral system that weights votes of residents of North Dakota and Wyoming 3-4X greater than those in California and New York, holds elections on a working Tuesday, and uses plurality voting, may prompt actual change, perhaps to “Best Out Of Three” system, or drawing straws.

  5. He is pretty funny, for a President.

  6. Inevitable war with foreign power and subsequent nuclear winter may offer effective solution to global warming.

  7. Nation avoids messy spectre of four years of depressing gridlock where bitter Republicans hold White House hostage and nothing gets done.

  8. Small children can be told that anything is possible with a straight face.

  9. Nation will undergo a great strengthening, in “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” sense.

  10. Shocking the hell out of the ruling class is necessary from time to time in order to avoid a build-up of complacency and corruption, so why not now. And election campaigns are all about demonizing opponents but only rarely are they actual demons.

Also the UK voted to Brexit, so, you know, sucks to be those guys.

Fri 04

Fresh Eyes











Tue 11

In Which I Address Various Questions


Hey Max. First, thanks for making NationStates. Second, did you really find a sock full of pennies? If so where?


I did not really find a sock full of pennies. That was a humorous fiction. But everything else on this site is true. Some people think I make up stuff for it, like I’m inventing the “Ask Max” questions, but that’s wrong. I’m actually a little shocked anyone would think that. The truth is that by the time I finish working on my novel each day, I’m fictionally tapped out. I don’t have enough creativity left to make up anything. It would be a good interrogation technique: If you have a terrorist, make them write fiction for eight hours, then ask them where the bomb is. By then he has no lies left, I guarantee it.

But I have been tardy about answering Ask Max questions, which I feel bad about. Here are some more:

How do you become a banana for a week?


You start by becoming a banana for a minute and work your way up.

Do you even look at these?



Have you met an Alien?


No. But I’m a little concerned by your capitalization of “Alien.” I feel like your next question is: “Would you like to?”

Does this site cover the complete list of all your works, or only a certain genre?


Holy God. So, what, I’m maintaining a stable of websites, one devoted to my mainstream fiction, one to my series of romances, another to my erotic swords-and-sandals fantasies, and so on? I think you’re saying I don’t publish enough, Skankhunt42. Okay. Message received.

What time is bed time?


I go to bed about 4am Pacific Time. This is 10pm in my local timezone.

What do you put on the census when it asks what your job is? Do you think it is creative that I put penguin tamer?


No I don’t, Greg. I think that’s irresponsible. The census is no joke. It’s used to make informed public spending decisions, like where to put schools, and which populations need suppressing because they’re too close to the truth. I put down “Writer,” which is technically true for anyone who is in the process of filling out their census.

Have you heard about these creepy clown sightings in the Southern and Eastern US?


It’s nerds with too much time on their hands, right? I mean, I don’t know anything about it. But it sounds like something I would have thought was an awesome idea when I was about 19: Dress up as a weird clown. Now it sounds like a good way to get punched in the face. People don’t like weird clowns.

How are you? Do you still live in Australia? Is there a lot of spiders? I’d love to come to your country, but bugs and spiders scare the sh.t out of me…


I’ll be honest with you, Kenza, there are basically no spiders here. We just like to perpetuate that idea because it makes us seem tough and fearless. Well I mean there are some spiders. I did just catch a spider in the living room yesterday and move it to the back yard. But only because its thick furry body was blocking the light. I could hardly see a thing in there.

what is your net worth


I am worth several hundred nets.

If there was one word you could use to describe Emily from Lexicon, what would it be?



Thu 08

WTF is “Young Adult”

Jennifer Government

Is Jennifer Government a young adult novel?


Oh I don’t know, is the MARGARET ALEXANDER EDWARDS ALEX AWARD for young adult novels?

Max Barry nonchalantly holding a golden medal as if he barely even notices it's there, but you know he totally does

It is. That’s the answer to that question. Well, kind of. It is the American Library Association prize for “adult books with special appeal to teen readers.” Which I guess isn’t quite the same thing. Probably a true young adult novel primarily appeals to teen readers, like features them as main characters. I think that’s right.

I just asked Jen for the definition of a a young adult novel. She is a school teacher-librarian. She said, “It depends what you mean by young adult.” I feel like there isn’t a really hard line here.

Anyway, Jennifer Government is a book I would have liked to read in high school. So there you go.

P.S. Hahaha, I totally misled you. Lexicon won the Alex Award, not Jennifer Government. And Lexicon has sex and death and horror and is quite a lot less goofy than JG, which just goes to show those things don’t disqualify a novel from appealing to teens, at least in the eyes of librarians. The opposite, if anything. Librarians are amazing like that. They will hand you a book they know will make your eyes bug out because they know that is the point of novels, not to satisfy but to surprise.

Tue 16

Send in the Clowns







Sun 07

Abandoning the Book


I started writing a book and I’m at about 13,000+ words so far two years ago. Then after that I got busy with schoolwork and other stuff and couldn’t go back to it. Now, I revisit it and realize that, well, it’s total crap and that my writing style essentially changed. Now I’ve got to do a major re-edit and I haven’t even finished it yet. Should I abandon it and start writing other things?


Yep. Definitely. One hundred percent. I know this is the right answer because you said “and start writing other things.” If you had stopped at “should I abandon it” I wouldn’t be sure. I often feel like abandoning a book just because sometimes I can’t figure out how to get everyone from A to B without characters acting like soulless automatons so it’s not feeling at all like it did in my head and everything sucks and why am I even doing this. But that’s just writing.

I also often re-read the start of a draft I’m only part-way through and decide it’s terrible, because back then I had no idea what I was doing, so now everything feels a little off. Or a lot off. This is why it’s actually a bad idea to re-read a draft-in-progress. You ideally want to save that inevitable disappointing discovery until you have a complete manuscript, at which point you’re too invested to walk away. But I can’t help myself.

So getting cheesed off with your book can manifest as one of two feelings. The first is an urgent desire to start fixing it because you know it can be better. That’s good. The second is an urgent desire to throw it in a fire and go do something else. That’s also good if the something else involves writing. Because it’s never a mistake to write something. I honestly think you can find something like 50% of a great book in the first sentence, just because occasionally you stumble across a line that gives you tone and character and world in a way that immediately suggests the next 20,000 words. Starting something new can be a great reminder for me that I’m not not actually a shitty writer, I’m just stuck in a difficult narrative.

Write what you feel. Everything is better, faster, and more fun when you love it. So when it’s a choice between writing something you enjoy and writing something you don’t, that’s easy. Just as long as it’s something.

Thu 07

Misinterpreting Copyright


I just read “Misinterpreting Copyright” by Richard Stallman, found the points he makes very convincing and am curious about your opinion as an author and someone who writes about piracy, DRM, and such things.


Stallman is right about everything. It’s just that the logical conclusions he reaches are so uncomfortable, it’s easier to pretend he’s wrong. It’s like PETA. There’s no way what we’re currently doing to animals is moral. But burgers are awesome and you can enjoy them better if PETA is a bunch of hypocritical wackos. So we’re all ears for that narrative.

Stallman is the guy saying, “You know, instead of buying that coffee, you could have given an impoverished third-world child safe drinking water.” You can’t fault the logic. But no-one wants to take it to that extreme. So you never hear people criticizing Stallman’s arguments. Instead, it’s always how he was late to a lecture or dresses badly or was rude to someone once.

So what Stallman is right about this time is that copyright was created for the benefit of readers, not writers. This is a foundational principle of capitalism in general: that the purpose of production is consumption. It’s not to create jobs. Jobs are a side-effect, a byproduct of having more stuff available more cheaply. Ideally, the stuff would be free and unlimited, in which case we wouldn’t need jobs at all. The stuff is the point, not the jobs.

The goal of copyright wasn’t for me to give up my day job selling Unix computer systems and live a luxurious life of working naked from home. That was just a side-effect of a system designed to encourage me to write more books. And frankly I’m not sure how well it’s working. It’s been a while since my last novel. Sure, it’s helpful to have time and freedom for writing, but I found being trapped in a corporate sales job pretty motivating, too. I can’t for 100% certain say that I’m producing more words today than I would if forced to sit under fluorescent lighting in a suit for 8 hours a day and given a laptop and freedom for one hour in the middle. Or threatened with waterboarding. There are lots of ways to incentivize artists, is my point.

But copyright isn’t even about that any more. At first it lasted for 14 years, after which anyone could sell copies, write a spin-off, or adapt the work; now it usually lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, so just forget about doing anything ever unless you buy the rights. That’s not because we think we’ll get more books if dead authors’ estates can get paid in 2116; dead writers can’t write faster, and no-one ever decided whether to write a novel based on their prospects for postmortem royalties. Instead, we have adopted the idea that copyright is a moral thing, which artists deserve. If you make something up, you should be able to control it for the rest of your life, and then some, because it’s yours.

Personally, although I totally get the proprietary instinct (you’ll never treat my kids as well as I do), I think stories are bigger than authors. There’s no doubt to me that if copyright still lasted 14 years, we would be a lot richer for random artists and companies taking James Bond or Superman or Star Wars and doing what they liked. There would be a lot of dreck, yes. But from that hotbed of competition and evolution there would also be some truly great stories.

And copyright today financially benefits companies more than people. The vast majority of writers wouldn’t be affected at all if copyright was radically shortened, because the vast majority of books don’t generate royalties for decades. They do it for a few years, if at all. Only the mega-blockbusters have that kind of tail, and if you’ve produced one of those, you’re not starving. So in practice, the nice idea that artists should enjoy creative control forever translates into a small number of media companies cranking the handles on a couple dozen money-printing machines that no-one else is allowed to touch.

I’m a lot less idealistic than Stallman, though. Of course, everyone is.

Fri 10

I Would Eat A Brick


Would you eat a brick if I told you it would cure the cancer of anyone afflicted?


Of course. That would be the most effective cancer treatment in the world. We’re currently shooting people full of poison and it doesn’t even work most of the time. Brick-eating would be a major technological breakthrough. You would win the Nobel Prize for discovering a treatment method as relatively simple and painless as brick-eating.

I would also kill an innocent person with a brick if that would cure cancer worldwide. I mean, I wouldn’t enjoy it. But cancer is the worst. In fact, I would let you kill me with a brick.

I knew someone who worked on The X-Files during its original run and when they were shutting down after nine seasons, she said, “It’s not like we were curing cancer.” Because occasionally in the arts & entertainment industry you can stop and realize that you’re making up stories while other people are doing important things like saving lives or growing food or building houses. I said, sure, but the people who are have probably been watching The X-Files. I hope that is true.

Fri 03

Why I Hate Windows (this time)


Hey Max, why do you hate Windows?

No one you ever heard of



Written in 2007. Windows today is that times a thousand.





  1. We added a Start button

  2. We removed the Start button



Thu 19

My Age


What’s your age?

A lonely man





You see the problem.

Thu 12

The Glorious Republic That Almost Was

What Max Reckons





Fri 22

When I’m Not Writing










P.S. Aside from this I also:


  2. do NationStates

Wed 13

A Real Book






Thu 24

Post-Zombie Apocalypse Plans






  • It’s fun

  • Expectation that brilliant words will change world

  • Hope of fame & fortune

  • Hope of seeing book on shelves one day

  • Better job than telephone sales


  • Just published novel and too young to retire




Thu 03

When I Quit Writing








Wed 24

How I Won My Wife


I had the pleasure of reading “Machine Man” for college and right now we have to write an argumentative essay on whatever we want. Do you mind sharing your thoughts on Technology and how it affects Relationships and Face-to-Face communication?


I’m not sure this is a good question for someone who never goes anywhere. My face-to-face communications today have been:

  • I bought a quiche and a cookie from some people in a cafe

  • I accidentally scared a girl while running

  • My cat was like, “I’m going upstairs,” and I was like, “Oh no, you’re not,” then she ran upstairs.

Also family. I do talk to my family.

But yes, it is a complex and fascinating question. For example, I convinced my wife-to-be to move across the country for me by writing her letters. She was two thousand miles away at the time. So in the absence of technology, I wouldn’t have been able to communicate with her at all.

But if there had been more technology, like Skype, that would have been bad for me, too. I was very fortunate to be wooing her at a time of prohibitively expensive long-distance phone calls. Because I’m really playing to my strengths with the written word. I come off relatively well there. If I’d had to carry on actual conversations, I don’t think things would have gone so well. She had seen me attempt conversation shortly before she moved away and clearly it wasn’t very compelling. It was the absence of affordable communications technology that caused her to forget that and come back.

(Obviously once she got here, she remembered. But by then she’d already uprooted her life. So she was stuck.)

I believe that comprehensively answers your question. Good luck with your essay.

Thu 18

Outlines: Nice in Theory






Day 1: “That’s a great idea.”








Wed 10

Naked Wet Flour-Encrusted Tong Strangulations

What Max Reckons

Hello Max,








Tue 02




Adam’s Neighbour



  1. Someone wants something


  3. The feeling that something bad is going to happen soon

  4. Guess what, something wasn’t like you thought

  5. The feeling that something good is going to happen soon

  6. Somebody dies

  7. Where everybody is

  8. How old they are

  9. What they’re wearing


Thu 28

What I’m Angry About Today

What Max Reckons

Hey Max, what are you angry about today?



Mon 18

Stages of Creative Laziness











Wed 13

Dystopian Horror Wears a Hairpiece

What Max Reckons

Which dystopian horrors you’ve imagined have actually come true so far?






Wed 06

The Trouble With Owen

What Max Reckons


Concerned Citizen


Owen is my arch-nemesis because:






So now you’re up to speed.


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