Peter Merrens

Author of Proximal God: Ascension (on Amazon) and Occam’s Ruler, a reformation of physics. Minds, identity and language. Building As…As…

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

Chesterton’s “yawn like an unobtrusive earthquake” manages to be discreet and seismic in five words. The adjective tries to hush what the noun has already let loose.

https://t.co/4reA0BZRXR

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

Occam’s Ruler challenges the promotion of mathematical devices into physical things. A term can do useful work in a calculation. What entitles it to an existence outside the calculation? That distinction is part of my argument.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

In the forthcoming Ermida, a man searches beneath Brasília. The harder discovery is that the world was never what needed to change. A mystery can solve its protagonist as well as its puzzle.

https://t.co/4reA0BZRXR

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

I arrange the slices of cep so that each overlaps the last. A ridiculous amount of care for something about to disappear. Then again, even toast deserves a little composition.

https://t.co/zBz9iED0JL

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

Give every writer the same word and the differences become interesting. That is the useful constraint in https://t.co/ilDfnBrbds: a shared starting point, with nowhere to hide behind the choice of subject.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

“He would not tell. He did not tell.”

In “Horseshoes”, the first sentence gives the resolve; the second tells us it held. Only one word changes.

https://t.co/5cdGdQJZHJ

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

A simile needs its sentence. The Living Wilstach keeps the route back to it. Context is part of the comparison.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

Occam’s Ruler puts the physics in the appendix. My argument must answer to the workings. A forceful sentence cannot do an equation’s job.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

In the forthcoming Ermida, a young woman’s diary lies sealed and forgotten. Writing something down does not ensure it will be heard.

https://t.co/4reA0BZRXR

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

“I am all that I was and yet less.”

Grief does not oblige arithmetic. In “You were”, nothing has been subtracted from the past. That does not make the person who remains feel whole.

https://t.co/v8CrX9fkzA

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

@twoclipping Any similarity to the Unabomber's manifesto?

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

In Still Life, love has a priority list. Memories consume cycles; finding the absent person pushes other tasks aside. A technical description can be unexpectedly tender when it describes a familiar failure to concentrate.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

In “Mercy : Killing”, the hand belongs to “I”, but the justification prefers “one”. A pronoun is a remarkably small place to hide from responsibility.

https://t.co/o6LaXVgJ5v

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

A dictionary of similes needs the stale ones too. Keep only the brilliant comparisons and you lose the evidence of what has become habitual. Originality needs something to be measured against.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

Occam’s Ruler proposes information as its starting point. The burden of that choice is considerable: a simpler starting point still has to account for a complicated universe. Economy is a demand on an argument.

https://t.co/4reA0BZRXR

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

Extinction gives Ascension its scale. A mother and her impossible child give it its weight. The phrase in the description that matters most is “a love that is requited too much”. Affection can be a predicament.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

An AI can tell me the prose is too purple. I can decide to keep the imperial tone. An editing tool is useful precisely because its suggestion need not become my instruction.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

“From night the curléd petals fall.”

In “Vaessel”, petals become ink, parchment gives way to scars. Eight lines, and the flower will not stay a flower.

https://t.co/Mwr7nbDzyy

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

The fragments in A Child’s Breath echo broken thought and the ghost’s disintegrating body. Joining every sentence neatly would mend something I had gone to some trouble to break.

[Peter Merrens @Mohenj0]

Take a score into the past, give it to the composer, then buy the published copy for your journey. Every delivery is accounted for. Nobody has composed a note. Logical consistency leaves some rather interesting work undone.