Gendrome is a new novel by Daniel A. Kaufman, illustrated by Mariah Gregg-Fling. It imagines a world that is adjacent to, but not quite our own. Cathode Ray Zone is pleased to present Gendrome in serial form. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we did...
“Here?” Courtney pointed at the stairs descending into the Moscow subway. We all peered down. “Does it really matter?” Jeff was impatient. This was the third subway entrance we’d examined, and it was freezing (as Moscow in February at 11pm tends to be). “They just...
“Can you give me a few minutes? I’ve got to dry my hair.” Debbie stood aside as I made my way into the house. She was wearing an oversized Champion sweatshirt and had a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. “Yeah, sure.” I gave her a quick kiss and watched as...
From 1991-1999, I was a graduate student, pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center in Manhattan. Now, you might think that this is a long time to seek a graduate degree (most people do it in four or five years), and you’d be right: I stretched the...
“What are you doing here?” It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I was sitting on one of several benches on the ninth floor landing of the New York Graduate Center, which doubled as a lobby for the philosophy department. Dave Stein had just come out of the elevator and...
“Again!” Mr. Sadowski beat his baton on the conductor’s stand. “Until it’s right! I don’t care if it takes all day!” We’d just mangled the Telemann Sinfonia for the third time. Sadowski was bluffing. We had twenty minutes of Music left, before the bell rang, and we...
“So, your mom is making you go too?” I was on the phone with my best friend, David Weber, discussing a Bar Mitzvah we were going to that weekend. “Yeah.” He sounded depressed. “She plays Mahjong with Yahney’s mother. I freaking hate that kid.” Philip Yahney was the...
During the late 1970’s and early 80’s, Michael Paley was my “lives-across-the-street” friend, which means that it was a friendship of convenience. A well-meaning doofus, Mike was gullible, accident prone, and generally a yutz. A kind of juvenile Inspector Clouseau,...
“I gotta’ get out of here for the summer.” Gene Lemon gave one more suck on his Newport menthol, before flicking it out of the window. “You know what I mean?” We were sitting in Gene’s car in the Roosevelt Field mall parking lot after our lunch shift at...
“So, what are you going to do?” It was 1987 and we were sitting in the TV room of the Alpha Tau Chi house at the University of Michigan. It was the third time Chris had asked me this. “I don’t know.” “What do you mean, you don’t know? Rush starts on Friday.” I’d been...
From the Introduction to the newly released – and previously unpublished – Terror 1 Trilogy, by Ben Caldwell (New York, Bantam, 2023). Edited with an Introduction by Manny Huffman. Hunter S. Thompson’s first novel, The Rum Diary, remained unpublished for decades,...
Ted Goldberg was a kid in my fifth grade class, back in 1978. We were class friends and even had a few “playdates” together (I first heard Supertramp’s Breakfast in America at his house), but we were never really close. In high school, we would maintain a friendly...
"Winter Sale" is a comic short story written by Milton Lawson with art by Dave Chisholm. Read "Winter Sale" Online
All past and future is created and issues out of that which is forever present. –St. Augustine I am at David Weber’s birthday party, and everyone from Mrs. Stone’s class is there. David’s parents rented out the school gym and there are colored streamers and...
First Iteration You are sitting in your Philosophy class, on a Tuesday afternoon. The topic is John Locke’s theory of personal identity, according to which you are the same person that you were at some earlier point in time, if you can remember your conscious...