Preparing for Disaster Preparedness, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

The Triumphant Return of Polly Esther

Suck.com was the web's very first (and, for quite a long time, longest-running) daily publication. (*) Founded by a couple of (particularly) disaffected Wired guys, it ran from 1995 to (its tragic cancellation in) 2001 – and basically invented a literary form along the way: the hypertextual, ironic essay. (See Johnson's Interface Culture for a rundown on that.)

Wednesdays on Suck featured the inimitable Polly Esther (instantiated in the illustrations of the nearly equally irreplaceable Terry Colon) who laid about her on the critical topics of modern dating, the tragically hip, Internet ennui, Generation X, mild mental illness, holiday hellishness, literary pretensions, alcohol and other psychic painkillers, annoyingly consequential life choices, the working life of new media pissboys, bitterness, and hyper-cynicism. Plus not to forget a giant, evil, Canadian rabbit – on crack. I previously published a list of particularly classic Fillers, to which you should treat yourself now if you haven't (or if you have).

Polly – aka Heather Havrilesky – more or less defined the age for many of us. She also made an awful lot of people feel a lot less alone.

In a couple of months, Ms Havrilesky has her first book coming out – a memoir. This event provides a critical re-balancing of a universe in which I had book deals, but members of the original Suck cadre had not. It's also very, very likely to be very, very good – not to mention enormously entertaining. (*)

Disaster Preparedness, by Heather Havrilesky

I'll be posting a review in this space as soon as the book hits shelves. Meanwhile, if it looks like your kind of thing, you might consider pre-ordering it. Pre-orders are a major factor in the success or failure of a book (and its author), and it's such a murderous landscape out there for people trying to make a living in this masochistically stupid way . . . Anyway, I'd consider it a personal favour if you pre-ordered a copy – even, actually, a great gift for that upcoming 11th anniversary of my 29th birthday, and for which I previously begged you not to get me any gifts . . . Otherwise, or in any case, do enjoy the Fillers. Cheers!

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


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