Science fiction essayist Paul T. Riddell isn't the first to compare magazine writing to public masturbation, but he's the first to practice what he preached and quite writing. Before he did, he and cohort Edgar Harris (former sports editor of Science Fiction Age) spent thirteen years covering such diverse subjects as assistance to beginning writers ("I want to hunt down the idiot who came up with that 'writers make $37.50 an hour' story and let Whitley Strieber's aliens make him/her squeal like a pig") to Harlan Ellison's cybernetic history and how Canada formally apologized to the UN for the...

Back during the heady days of the dotcom boom, struggling writer Paul T. Riddell, overdosed on reruns of Max Headroom and incredible hubris, decided to try his hand at Internet journalism. Between 1998 and 2002, he wrote for an audience of dozens on subjects ranging from bookstore management to the famous Mad Shitter of Texas Instruments, and the "best" appear here in dead-tree format for the first time. Feel free to descend into Riddell's world, where Rant Makes Right, japery is the order of the day, and the pen is mightier than the sword only until you try to decapitate an editor with a...