I think we're alone now: stories

Abstract

I Think We're Alone Now is eight stories about how hard it is to talk to other people at furry conventions, and on computers, and over the phone, and in public, and in private, and in ancient Phoenicia. They're about how that difficulty drives us to quiet, and glibness, and cynicism, and saying things we don't mean. They're also about what we really want to talk about, and can't. The history of fiction is a history of people trying to say very important, ineffable things to each other, and lacking the words to do it. After sincerity, hidden inside little cultural grottos they can't explain to anyone else, these people are trying to gather up the inconsequential-seeming, perpetually half-ironized materials of their lives into something they can give to someone else.