New story: "A Subscribers-Only Sneak Peek into the Preliminary Report on the Conditions of the Camps"

I’ve got a new story at this cool new science-fiction newsletter-subscription publication called The Sunday Morning Transport. It’s free to read over here, but please consider subscribing: you get new a new story every Sunday from a killer roster of writers.

My story’s called “A Subscribers-Only Sneak Peek into the Preliminary Report on the Conditions of the Camps,” and here are the first two paragraphs. You can read the rest over here.

Not bad. Really. Seriously. Not bad, or at least definitely not as bad as you’ve been led to believe. Pretty okay conditions overall.

There’s been this narrative out there that FloriCorp and maybe all of Colombia has been obfuscating, that they—we—have been denying outside observers access into the perimeter, that we keep a shifting account of the number of deaths and disappearances, that anytime we’re asked to provide a straightforward answer to a simple question, we just go around in circles, that we’re negligent re: the high incidence of injuries, that all we care about is the bottom line, that now that we are wealthy, we’re just doing what the wealthy do. But if that were the case, why would I be writing this (preliminary) report? I mean, why would I even try to tell you of everything that’s going on with the color variation issues re: the Consumers?

There’s a bunch of obvious sources of inspiration: the Colombian flower industry and the immigrant detention camps are the two biggest. I may expand on the post a little with some of my favorite odd bits of information I found while writing this piece.

Alien Terminator!

I'm looking into Cartagena's role in the exploitation film industry and landed on the Franco Nero vehicle Top Line (aka Alien Terminator). The Wikipedia article only mentions the UFOs and the aliens, but this Colombian web site does a better job at noting the potential awesomeness of this thing:

Franco Nero plays a drunkard who discovers a UFO in the Cartagena jungle. He finds himself chased by armed Nazis, dangerous bulls, and a Terminator-style robot played by the Colombian actor Rodrigo Obregón.

Franco Nero interpreta a un borrachín que descubre un ovni en la selva de Cartagena, Colombia. Se verá involucrado en toda clase de persecuciones involucrando a nazis armados, toros de lidia peligrosos y a un robot estilo Terminator, interpretado por el actor colombiano Rodrigo Obregón.

Also here is the movie condensed into its best 12 minutes by someone on YouTube:

Convergences: Scooby and the Narcos, Archie and the Undead

Scooby and Archie are both taken to some pretty dark places -- the first is a totally imaginary scenario (in a novel that also gives you Homes Simpson in a noir called D.O.H.), the second an actual thing you can pick up. Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge provides an imaginary Scooby Doo set-up that actually sounds just a smidgen less dark than what the Archie folks are going to do to Archie in a five-issue run.

Scooby Goes Latin! (1990), from Pynchon's Bleeding Edge:
"Hi, mom." She wants to enfold him forever. Instead lets him recap the plot for her. Shaggy, somehow allowed to drive the van, has become confused and made some navigational errors, landing the adventurous quintet eventually in Medellín, Colombia, home at the time to a notorious cocaine cartel, where they stumble onto a scheme by a rogue DEA agent to gain control of the cartel by pretending to be the ghost -- what else -- of an assassinated drug kingpin. With the help of a pack of local street urchins, however, Scooby and his pals foil the plan.

The cartoon comes back on, the villain is brought to justice. "And I would've gotten away with it, too," he complains, "if it hadn't been for those Medellín kids!"

From this NPR story on Afterlife with Archie:
Reggie Mantle runs over Jughead's fluffy pup Hot Dog. (Of course Reggie started it!) Jughead takes Hot Dog to Sabrina the teen witch, who using the Necronomicon and channeling Pet Sematary, brings him back to life. (And messes it up, 'cause that's what she does!) Hot Dog bites Jughead, who ends up consuming victims at the Halloween Dance. (He is always hungry!)