Barry Lyga's Blog: The BLog

Not a chunk of something this month — a complete story!

I’m not very good at writing short fiction, as anyone who’s contemplated the spines of my books can plainly see. My brother once joked that, at under 300 pages, Bang qualifies as a “Barry Lyga short story.”

But sometimes I try my hand at short fiction. Below is a bit of flash fiction I attempted. I never managed to do anything with it, but I’ve always liked it. Check it out!

“What was it Glenn said when he landed on the moon?” the President asked. “His exact words.”

“‘I’ve taken a small step as a man, but a giant leap for Mankind,’” his Chief of Staff said, looking up abruptly from his clipboard. “Sir, we have–”

The President waved him off. “Fifteen minutes to the press conference. I know. Relax. I was just thinking… That Glenn bit. That should have been in the speech.”

The Chief of Staff chewed his bottom lip. “I can talk to–”

“No. No. Don’t bother. We’re too close now.” He stopped pacing. He was never this nervous. Never. Not even during the election. But then again, he’d never had a speech this important, this monumental to make.

“Aliens living on the moon,” he muttered. “Watching us for God knows how long?”

“Since, uh, World War II, at least.” The Chief of Staff stuttered as he picked his next words carefully. “The timeline was in the briefing book from CIA and you–”

“It was rhetorical.” The President stopped pacing long enough to gaze at the black-framed picture on his desk. “She would have been amazed by this, you know. I would give anything to have her stand by me when I announce this.” His voice trembled, then recovered, stronger than before. “To think that our neighbors have been on the moon all along. That they come in peace.” He grinned that broad, killer grin that television and photographers loved so much. It had been in short supply these past four years. Ever since that November day.

“‘That, like our forefathers,’” he went on, quoting from the speech he would give in a few minutes, “‘they have traveled long and far in search of sanctuary, and have found it on our shores.’”

He sighed, turning away from the desk and the picture. “Are the delegates here?”

“Representatives from Britain, France, Canada, Spain, and Portugal will be at the podium with you. The Soviets and Chinese are being briefed right now. Still not sure that was the right–”

The President shrugged. “They had to be briefed once we made contact. There’s more at stake here than just one country. Things have been boiling almost to the panic point ever since NASA cut off Glenn’s feed last week. We needed the time. The world’s been waiting. Now it’s time to make it real.”

“It was the right thing to do, sir. The only thing. And you’re doing the right thing now by going public. I’m just worried about the Soviet–”

That grin again. “You let me worry about the Soviets and the Chinese. They’re going to come around. You’ll see. The speechwriters did a good job on this one. We’re going to have everyone on the planet welcoming the aliens with open arms and looking at the U.S. in a new light at the same time.” He picked up the hard copy of the speech and flipped through it. “Come get me in another minute or so. I want a few moments alone.”

Once alone, the President slowly sank into his chair. His back bothered him more and more recently, though he would never admit it. That Irish stubborn streak…

Of course he was doing the right thing. Of course. It was the only option. To go public. To share the news with the whole of Mankind. To take that giant leap into a brighter and more peaceful future. We are not alone in this universe. We are not alone and the first indication of our membership in a broader universe is a hand offered in peace.

Thank God contact happened on his watch. Another year or so and he would have been out of office…and who knows how Johnson or someone else would handle this? Good Lord, who knows how Nixon would have handled it?

On a beautiful November day in 1967, President John F. Kennedy gazed again at the picture of his dead wife. He felt calm. At peace. But he couldn’t help wondering how things might have turned out for the world, how things might have been different, had not Oswald missed.

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)

Tabitha King is the wife of Stephen King and a fine, fine author in her own right. As a kid, after I’d read through Mr. King’s oeuvre to date, I dived into what I could find of her work. And I really liked it! Whereas Uncle Stevie goes for flat-out horror, Tabby aims for maximum…discomfort. Her work is unsettling, not scary.

Honestly, I think that’s worse.

I had never heard of Small World, but I came across it at a local library fundraiser and picked it up. And oh…my…god. This book.

This book!

The prose itself is languid in that way of seventies and eighties prose. A lot of descriptive writing that is quite good, but not usually seen any more. But the premise of the book is so utterly bizarre and the execution so deeply, deeply disconcerting… I don’t even know how to feel about it! It’s just icky. In the best way!

In a nutshell: The grown daughter of a former president is obsessed with dollhouses. And then she meets a disgraced scientist who has invented a gadget that shrinks things. The story goes exactly where you think…but by pathways you don’t expect, and with details and elements that skirt the edge of horror and careen headlong into outright mind-fuckery.

The book is out of print, but check around the used bookstores of the analog and digital varieties: If you can get your hands on a copy, check it out!

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)

Along with his ex-wife, Hiroko Kazama, Gen Sekine became a Japanese horror story in the early nineties. Together, the couple owned a dog breeding business…and their victims were customers they’d scammed.

The details of the scam don’t matter all that much for our purposes, but suffice it to say, Sekine would sell people dogs he claimed were rare breeds or for purposes of breeding, only for them to turn out to be, well, not so rare. Or, in some cases, incapable of breeding due to age.

The couple made pretty good bank with this scam. They had managed to build up a reputation as good breeders and they exploited that reputation to rake in ill-gotten dough.

But then some folks twigged to the scam and threatened to expose them.

So, as you do, Gen and Hiroko decided to poison these people.

The problem with poisoning people, of course, is that then you have dead bodies. So the couple forced one of their employees to let them use his property to dispose of the bodies. Rightly thinking that burying the bodies wouldn’t be enough, Gen butchered them. And I mean butchered them, meticulously and intricately cutting up the bodies until there was really nothing left but bones…which he burned to ash.

Fortunately, that recalcitrant employee was a witness and testified to four murders. Gen and Hiroko were both convicted and sentenced to death. Whew!

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)

As I post this, it’s mid-August and I am very much ready for my lovely children to return to school. Don’t get me wrong — I love my kids, but it’s hard to get work done over the summer break when they’re either running around the house with their friends or needing to be shepherded to or from a camp of some sort.

The parents out there know. 😂

Anyway, the summer has been pretty good to me, honestly, though ridiculously hot. (I suppose that’s something we’re all going to have to get used to…) I’m happy to report that I just sold two more books!

This is the beginning of a series called SPACE TRAIN!, which is my very first foray into the world of chapter books. One day, the idea of trains running through outer space on rails made of light popped into my head. My son is obsessed with trains, so I thought this might be a fun story for him. Next thing I knew, I’d written the whole thing and realized that it was pretty darn good! I handed it off to my agent, who agreed, and then she sold it!

I’ll have more info on it as time goes on. For now, I’m just really excited to have broken through to a new age group…and to have a book my own kids might actually read!

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)

When this moment occurred in Infinity War, I had to do everything in my power not to jump up and scream in delight in the theater. Let me explain…

When I wrote Thanos: Titan Consumed, Infinity War was still several months in the future. I knew some things about the movie (Thanos’s motivation, for example, as well as the location of the Soul Stone), but not everything.

(An aside: In my first conversation with my editor after agreeing to write the book, I said to him, “The movie’s gotta end with the Snap, right?” He concurred. I later asked the studio if the movie would end “with Thanos in full possession of the Infinity Stones.” They replied, “I’m not telling you how the film ends!” But I knew I was right. And I was!)

Anyway, I was writing the book without knowing all that much about the movie. Contrary to some speculation I’ve seen online, I never saw a script or spoke with the screenwriters. So I was using what little information I’d been given and then filling in the rest with my own imagination.

And this is a bit I wrote towards the end of the book (spoilers!):

So when Thanos chides Thor, “You should have gone for the head…” I was ecstatic. I had nailed the character, right down to mimicking an element of his personality that I couldn’t have possibly known about. If you’ve read the book and seen the movie, for all you knew, this was carefully coordinated. But it was just the best, most delicious sort of coincidence.

(Above: Portrait of the Artist as a Young(er) Man — me about 20 years ago.)

Today, August 5, 2025, is the twentieth anniversary of the day my agent, Kathleen Anderson, called me from Japan, where she was vacationing, to tell me that Houghton-Mifflin had won the auction for my first novel…and also wanted my next one.

Which I hadn’t written yet.

Still. I was over the moon to have sold one book, let alone two. I knew at the very least I would have two books to my name, which was two more than I’d had the day before.

Twenty years. I’ve published 27 books in that time, and I recently sold my thirtieth. So I will be sticking around at least a little bit longer.

I want to thank everyone who’s been there from the beginning…and everyone who has come on board since. I would write even if no one was reading, but I gotta be honest — it’s a lot more fun with you guys at the other end of the book!

P.S. If you’re feeling celebratory, go ahead and buy one of my books!

So, here are my thoughts on Superman (2025), technically the first movie ever to bear that eponymous title. Spoilers ahoy! You have been warned!

I have to start by saying that this review is most likely not what most of you were hoping for or expecting from me, a gigantic comic book nerd and Superman fan. The general consensus in the pop culture world is that James Gunn et alia knocked this one out of the park, that the movie is a soaring triumph, that it was, in a word, magnificent.

My feeling is that it’s…fine.

It was good.

I wanted it to be great. Alas, it is not.

But good…

Especially for DC/WB…

Especially for this character, much-abused by the film studio for many years now…

Good might be enough. It’s certainly enough for me. Like I said, I wanted it to be great, but I’ll settle for good, especially when the nearest antecedent bore precisely zero resemblance to the character I’ve known and loved most of my life.

Why good and not great? Well, I will tell you. But hey — if you abso-friggin’-lutely tmetically loved this movie, consider stopping here. Because I might piss you off. And I’d hate to piss you off — I like you!

Worse yet, even though this is — again, tmetically — abso-friggin’-lutely not my intention, I may inadvertently change your mind about the movie. And I’d hate to do that. Because I don’t want to yuck someone else’s yum and Rao knows we all need some yum in our lives right now.

OK. Consider yourself warned, both in terms of spoilers and all else. Let’s dive in.

I’m going to start with a bit of praise, then go into what I didn’t like, then move on to what I really liked quite a lot, just so we don’t end on a down note.

The general tone of the movie is pretty much pitch perfect. While I prefer my Superman a wee bit more mature and reserved than David Corenswet’s, the tone worked for me and I think was properly reflective of the character. For that matter, Corenswet himself was a casting coup. Dude looks like Superman and Clark. While I will not profane the sacred name of Christopher Reeve by comparison, I will say that Corenswet is the best Kal-El we’ve had on film since Mr. Reeve. (Brandon Routh was terrific, don’t get me wrong, but his portrayal will always be too indebted to Reeve’s to stand on its own. And Henry Cavill looked like Superman more than almost anyone else alive, but I never bought him as Clark. Not for a second. Not his fault — he didn’t really have a lot of Clark to do.)

The rest of the casting was, no surprise, pitch perfect as well. Say what you will about Gunn (and he’s honestly hit-or-miss for me), but that dude knows how to cast a movie. I mean, have we seen a better Perry White on screen than Wendell Pierce? Dude has, like, a half dozen lines, but absolutely 1000% sells his Perry White. I would watch an HBO miniseries of Pierce-as-White in a heartbeat. And again, dude has something like ten seconds of screen time. That is goddamn impressive casting!

THINGS THAT AM GOOD AND I LIKED

Yeah, we’re using Bizarro-speak to avoid too much negativity…

Hawkgirl: Everyone seems to be ga-ga over Hawkgirl because our culture is currently obsessed with “bad-ass girl who is sarcastic and disaffected and beats people up.” To which I say: Yawn. Also, she committed a war crime/political assassination. Yay?

I hate her magically appearing and disappearing wings. You mean to tell me that the guy who figured out how to get Dave Bautista, a raccoon, and Groot into the same frame couldn’t figure out how to have her wings stay visible in crowd scenes? I absolutely loathe the filmic convenience of Hawk-people’s wings disappearing when not in use. The wings are a great visual. Use them! (Plus, the disappearing wings raise all sorts of awkward questions about physiology and such — just show them!)

The Kents: Again, people seem to love them and apparently Gunn based them on some friend’s parents, but to me they just came across as yokels from the jump. Not for a moment did I believe that these people were able to raise a super-powered child. The momentary yuks from their speakerphone introduction weren’t worth it.

Ultraman: The “reveal” was telegraphed so many light-years away that by the time we “find out” who/what Ultraman is, I almost spit out my Coke laughing that Gunn felt it necessary even to tell us.

Timing: Lex breaches the Fortress of Solitude during the night and assures his compatriots that he has a distraction set up for Superman. Again, at night, we see his henchmen release the Baby Kaiju into Metropolis. Next thing we know, it’s daylight and Superman is fighting the enormous kaiju.

So… The “distraction” happened hours after Lex hacked the Fortress computer? What? Are we supposed to imagine Superman’s been fighting it all night? Because a news report mentions it was recently 7-feet tall and then grew, so when did Superman actually get involved in this thing? Did I miss a throwaway line?

Metamorpho can’t make kryptonite. He can only make compounds that already exist in the human body. So… Yeah, that whole bit doesn’t work.

The Murder of Mali: I hated this for two reasons. First of all, I am foursquare against the modern tendency to make every supervillain a psychotic murderer who won’t hesitate to kill off anyone around them. The very best version of Lex Luthor is the one who would never murder an innocent — the only person he wants to kill and would kill is Superman. Because that is righteous and justified. Having him casually murder Mali is another yawner. Oh, no! The villain straight-up murdered someone and quipped about it! I’ve never seen that before! How edgy and innovative!

Second of all, for all Superman’s weeping and wailing at Mali’s murder, it has zero impact on him. Don’t worry, folks — I saw that headline about Mali’s death with Clark’s byline! To which I say: Nice, but so what? If you wanted to have Mali’s death appear impactful, then you could have had Superman mention it. Ever. He could have said something about it when trauma-dumping on Jonathan Kent, for example.  That would have been a great moment, and it wouldn’t have lengthened the scene or the movie for reasons we’ll get into soon enough.

No Iron Man 3 Moment: “Huh? Why are you bringing up Iron Man 3, Barry?” I’ll tell you why. Because Shane Black — whether by accident or design — stumbled into the finest expression of superheroism in cinema in that movie. Here it is:

Tony is told in no uncertain terms that he can’t save them all. AND THEN HE DOES. That right there is three minutes of superhero movie perfection, y’all.

Superman should do no less. There was no moment in the movie, for me at least, wherein Superman defied the odds like that. Sure, he flew into the stratosphere to rid himself of the Engineer’s…lung…stuff (???), but that was to save himself. And sure, he saved that squirrel and I loved it. But the closest we came to Stark-level heroism was the “I’m drowning in a lake of positrons with a baby” scene and honestly, that went on way too long and the stakes were murky because Mr. Terrific led me to believe that dipping in that river was insta-death, but Superman is fine in there and the baby had to get splashed in all that, but is also fine.

We needed a moment where Superman is told flat-out that something’s impossible and then he does it anyway.

The closest the movie comes to that Iron Man feeling is when Metamorpho says, “I can’t make a sun.” Pause. “But I can make something like a sun.” And then proceeds to do just that.

Honest to Rao, when that moment hit, my heart soared. I wanted to kiss James Gunn’s feet. It is the best, most perfect moment in the movie, a synthesis of Silver Age comic book science and deep character understanding, and it’s fucking brilliant and it’s here in the negative section because the best moment in Superman is a Metamorpho moment.

Why Do We Hate Krypton?

OK, this gets its own section because, in all honesty, I could probably overlook all of the above, but this…this bit is what prevents me from ever considering the movie to be great.

Why do we have to shit on Krypton?

“LOL, nerds, you thought Krypton was cool and all, but they were actually a bunch of arrogant supremacists who sent their son to earth to conquer it. Hur dur.”

Really?

Really?

That’s the twist? That’s what I’m supposed to take away from this movie — that immigrants need to forswear their heritage because their heritage is bad? In a movie being praised for uplifting immigrants, please consider that somehow everyone has missed that the immigrant in question was sent here to sabotage us.

Who wrote this: Stephen Miller?

For some reason that defies my understanding, modern writers seem to think that alien heritage vs. humanity is Superman’s core conflict and that this conflict must be resolved in favor of humanity. They could not be more wrong.

Superman is the ideal immigrant, perfectly assimilated, but never forgetting or dishonoring his heritage. He is the dream of a couple of Jewish kids who were painfully aware that no matter what they did, they wouldn’t truly belong. His superpower is the ability to live in two worlds without being ripped to shreds by the tidal forces of them both.

Saying that his birth parents were racist (speciesist?) shits obviates that entirely.

Beyond the thematic bumble, though, the reveal fails on plot and character levels as well.

We are told via Mr. Terrific that the message is 100% authentic and valid. Right. Let me get this straight: The Engineer uses her nano-tech powers to hack into an alien computer and steal data encoded in a format never before seen on earth. Damaged data. This data is then presumably stored somewhere in the Engineer herself until it can be downloaded and decrypted.

I can’t imagine a data scientist anywhere in the world willing to testify that there’s no possibility of data loss, corruption, or intentional shenanigans under those circumstances. Come on.

Furthermore, Krypton is now poisoned as a useful story tool for the entire DCU because it’s apparently a planet of assholes. Unless the plan is to say that it’s just Jor-El and Lara alone who were assholes…who still loved their son enough to send him off to earth…and cross their fingers that he’ll grow up to rule…instead of just sending one of themselves to conquer us…

(And since Supergirl grew up on Krypton, why didn’t she ever tell Superman, “Hey, dude, your parents most likely want you to rule this place.”?)

My biggest problem with “Kryptonians suck,” though, is that it doesn’t achieve the goals the story needs. Like…it really matters what that message says? Superman has been a good, moral person for thirty years…and now he doubts himself because of an old answering machine message? Really? That is how I’m supposed to see the steadfast ethical core character of the movie? As someone who doubts everything he’s achieved because it turns out his parents were dicks?  

How weak and inconsequential that makes Superman seem!

If you wanted him to suffer from self-doubt, then you already had the perfect tool: Mali. As I said before, I don’t like Mali dying, but you could use that to magnificent effect. Superman’s doubts come not from the message, but from his inability to save a single life. He could question his utility to the world, his powers, everything. “He was right in front of me, Pa. As close to me as you are. And I couldn’t save him. I could only watch him die.” And Jonathan could give him some homespun wisdom that would set him back on track.

Oh, and BTW: Lex’s whole plan hinges on turning the world against Superman so that the government will let him kill him. What was he going to do if he couldn’t access the message after all? What was he going to do if the message turned out to be nothing more insidious than “And don’t forget to brush your teeth, Kal-El.”

Wouldn’t it make more sense to put Metamorpho in the Ultraman armor, have him kryptonite up and kill Superman, then destroy the armor and kill off Metamorpho in your quantum Guantanamo (Quantanamo?)? No need to persuade anyone — Superman was killed by a mystery villain who never appeared again.

Sorry, but the whole message thing is just…bad. And you could fix everything else with the movie and it still would fall short of greatness because the message is that special blend of offensive, weird, annoying, ridiculous, and non-sensical. It reeks of Gunn wanting to make a Big Change to the story of Superman and planting his stake in the ground here…but the ground is too soft and the stake falls over immediately.

(And again: It’s also a completely unnecessary gimmick because it has nothing to do with the core conflict of the character. The core conflict of Superman is not “Am I human or am I Kryptonian?” The core conflict of Superman is “What is the best way to help?”)

THE GOOD

As I said before, the general tone of the movie is great. Well done, Gunn.

Mr. Terrific: Dude lives up to his name.. ‘nuff said.

Guy Gardner: If you had told me in 1987 that someday there would be a pixel-perfect version of this character on movie screens around the world and people would love it, I would have told you that you need to lay off the drugs. I would have been wrong. (But don’t do drugs, kids.) Bonus points for the giant green fingers flipping off Boravian tanks, something they couldn’t get away with in the comics, but is still perfectly consonant with the character.

Jimmy Olsen: Perfection. Back in the Silver Age, Jimmy was pulling baddies all. The. Time. So I have no problem believing that Eve was all over him…or that he was tired of her. Great use of the character. And Eve herself was a great twist; the  idea that she was spying on Lex under cover of solipsism is just *chef’s kiss*.

In fact, all of the Daily Planet staff was great. I already said how much I enjoyed Perry White, but Steve Lombard really worked for me, too, and I’m a purist who thinks Lombard belongs at WGBS, not the Planet. Beck Bennett is just too damn likable!

Other than my minor quibble about kryptonite, Metamorpho was fantastic. Seeing his bodiless head bopping around the pocket universe on gaseous tendrils just…tickled my Bronze Age Gen X heart something fierce. And like I said before: His moment of creating a not-sun was absolutely the best, most gasp-inducing moment in the movie.

Truthfully, every character felt fully realized and important (except for Hawkgirl). Gunn knows how to handle a large cast, for sure. It’s no mean feat to cram all of that into a couple of hours and not leave anyone feeling like a character suffered short shrift. No lie, I am impressed as hell with Gunn’s ability to work that magic.

The Superman robots were tons of fun, and the overall action was momentous and exciting. And just when you think, Jesus Christ, another Lex Luthor real estate scheme???, you get the twist that the scheme is just a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

Speaking of Lex…

Other than his casual murder of Mali, Lex was perfect. Brilliant. Honestly, it almost feels like his damn movie. His genius and his unrepentant rage and his sheer hatred for Superman drip from the screen, but never does Nicholas Hoult pander or sink to mere camp. His Lex is angry and just barely holding it together, but — again, Mali notwithstanding — never descends into supervillain cliché. 

So there you have it: My Superman review. I realize it’s not quite in step with the consensus, but it’s honest and it’s mine. If you adored the movie, I am truly happy for you, and I hope nothing I’ve said here diminishes it for you in any way. James Gunn did not make the Superman movie I hoped for, but he made a good one, and for that I am grateful.

Don’t worry — this isn’t a sponsorship or an ad or what-have-you. I just legit love this app.

Infuse is a video library/player app for a variety of platforms. Basically, you load up movies, TV shows, home videos, whatever — any sort of video content — on a network-connected drive and then you can watch that stuff through Infuse anywhere on your network.

Since there’s an AppleTV app, this means that I have access to the hundreds of DVDs I ripped and stashed on a self-made NAS-sort-of-thing (a Raspberry Pi with a hard drive and a network connection, basically) that lives out of the way in my basement. Every movie and TV show I own, along with home movies and such, all available on every device in the house…and, crucially, all of the TVs.

Infuse is free, but there are some additional features you can pay for. I haven’t bothered — the free version does everything I need and has done so for years.

I just love this app.

This one is a weird blast from the past…

Many years ago, I read some FBI reports on “sextortion,” which is, of course, the pervy practice of luring girls (sometimes boys, but usually girls) into doing something regrettable on a webcam…and then blackmailing them with that information into doing worse and worse. It’s a grotesque crime in so many ways, and I thought that maybe there was a book in it.

I mapped something out, but I was never really happy with it. One of the characters, though, would have been Flip, the anti-social, egoistic slacker/hacker from Hero-Type and the star of my upcoming novel Doxxtown. I thought you all might like to see the ending of the pitch I’d been working on, after Flip has helped two victims connect to a third who might hold all the pieces of the puzzle…

With Flip’s help, Brianna and Cammie get in touch with Valerie, who wants nothing more than to forget she’d ever gotten on the internet in the first place. But soon, she comes into their group, tempted by the one thing in the world that means more to her than anything else:

The possibility of revenge.

Now, Brianna, Cammie, and Val are no longer individual, scared girls.

They’re a team.

A force.

What follows is a harrowing cat-and-mouse game over the internet and in the real world, as they coordinate a plan to uncover their tormentor’s identity and stop him. They’re prepared to do whatever it takes, to sink to his level and lower, if needed. Prepared to pull the plug on his connection. Prepared to smash his computer to shards of glass and plastic.

Prepared to take a baseball bat and a tire iron to his kneecaps, if necessary.

Whatever it takes to stop him.

They are, in short, prepared for everything.

Everything, that is, except for who he is…

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)

Honestly, I had never heard of this guy before, but I was doing a deep dive into the history of serial murder for the upcoming adult Jazz stories, and it occurred to me: Who is the generally agreed-upon first serial killer in history?

Well, according to most sources, it’s a guy named Liu Pengli.

He was a prince in the Han Dynasty, so we’re talking second century BCE. A long time ago! And since he was the nephew of the Emperor, he had a lot of wealth and prestige to cover up his crimes.

Cover them up he did, to the tune of more than a hundred victims. Dude was so prolific that people were afraid to leave their houses at night.

Eventually, the son of one of his victims worked up the nerve to complain to the Emperor. And in what absolutely shocks me, the Emperor did notpardon his nephew or cover up his crimes or punish the brave subject who reported him. Instead, the Emperor — unable to bring himself to put his own kin to death — banished Liu Pengli and stripped him of his nobility, making him a rank commoner in exile.

Billy Dent’s thesis that serial killing is for rich elites…stands!

(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)