Joey Comeau

A Softer World, ha ha ha

city of trees

delight.

delight

Sun on her naked body. Sun on her smile. Her hand moving, sliding quiet toward her shirt, like clockwork.

“Back to work.” I can't hide bitterness in my voice. “You act like your computer is more important than me.”

She looks at me, confused but still smiling.

“A lot of things are more important than you,” she says. “Did… Did you not know that?”

-

giggles.

My brother died. He's still here. Just out of sight, screaming like an asshole. You can only hear him inside the house. I know, because the neighbours don't complain. The way he screams, they would. Other times he laughs. At least when he's screaming it still sounds like he's him. Like his mind is still whole, wherever he is. The laughter is worse. But occasionally it lines up with something funny I've done. Like, I stubbed my toe, and when he started laughing I started laughing too. Only occ...

Edith. (A love letter.)

Edith,

You haven’t had time to write back and already I am writing you a second letter. I was taught to have better manners than this and I suppose this letter is evidence of how little I learned. I am not the proper young woman I could have been.  

There are things I meant to say in my first letter, but I lost my nerve. First, you must have been confused to receive such an admiring letter about a story you have not yet published. Liz, the editor of th...

christmas is for cowards now?

"I loved it, but it's hard to recommend"

Bullshit. This IS the book you share. This book makes lifelong friends

"This book's fucked, you have to read it."

buy someone you love UNDEAD HUNGRY GRANDMOTHER BIRTHDAY PARTY for christmas.

actually get to know someone.

https://asofterworld.com/joey/grandmother.php

joey

god laughs.

a life needs secret plans.

mystery and adventure and hope. things might be boring now, or quiet, or slow, but at any moment the pieces will fall into place. you'll pull the floorboard aside and get out that little box of passports you keep there. you'll reach behind the couch for your go-bag. later, some tiny detail will surprise people as a clue to your terrifying backstory.

or maybe nobody will know at all. you'll get away with your schemes completely unknown. your funeral will ...

the hospital sounds... restful.

the events and people we encounter in our day might be fake, might be robots from other countries. the news might just be advertisements. you can't even trust videos of cute animals anymore. that adorable possum is stealing someone's drinking water and warming the planet.

if we could go back in time and talk to someone about our day to day hassles, it would be mental illness. if we could go back in time and journal about our feelings, we'd win the PKD award for paranoia. but we can't go...

The world used to be softer: Just go.

these early comics with scanned text from my typewriter have an unconscious emphasis on certain words, and other times the words blur, your mind drifting off halfway through a sentence.

the lucky accidents of film and the physical, imperfect type helped create a feeling like the world was unformed, like we were finding something in the fog. it was right there, we could see the outline of it.

sometimes it was a monster, sometimes it was 2025-11-16 18:26:09 +0000 UTC View Post

The world used to be softer: it still is, but it used to be, too.

(the world used to be softer: a classic comic from the Softer World archives, and some memories.)

-

a world where cats spoke to god, and giant babies terrorized towns. where sea monsters were real, and being in love was punk rock.

that was a softer world, at first.

aspirational.

but part of the joy of writing the comic was realizing that it wasn't just a fantasy. there were people out there like us, who knew that sometimes the blurry photos of sea monsters were...

The world used to be softer: Baby Doom

(the world used to be softer: a classic comic from the Softer World archives, and some memories.)

-

baby doom! a recurring character for a comic with no recurring characters. but the idea of baby doom was too silly to not revisit in the coming years, and pictures of baby emily were too delightfully evil, destined to bring Doom upon the world.

we're only on the second comic and we have a photograph that emily didn't take. the stacks of photographs in her arsenal were sometim...

The world used to be softer: Wednesday's debut.

(the world used to be softer: a classic comic from the Softer World archives, and some memories.)

-

this was the first A Softer World comic, both online and in the photocopied zine that we originally created. We stayed up late in the 24 hour photocopy shop, with a stack of Emily's photos and my typewriter. (in case we needed to change something or write out a title. ...

Today I got rained on

I forgot how alive you feel when out of nowhere it just starts POURING rain. Nature hides in the background a lot of the time, and then suddenly it is so powerful and all around you that it feels like everything. You feel like an idiot for forgetting it at all.

Do you remember walking through the woods and finding thumbnail-sized toads hopping in the gravel and dirt? Little, dry, bumpy-ski...

CARGO - Chapter 2

Chapter 2.

It was my day off. No mops, no brooms, no gravity scrubbers. 

There's a fake window in my cabin. If you've got a window in your room you don't feel like you're down deep in the middle of a spaceship. You aren't trapped at all! You could pull that curtain back and desperately climb to freedom whenever you wanted. Except the curtain doesn't open. There's just a light behind it.

The light is programmed to shine brighter on my day off though. That's thoughtful....

Cargo - (chapter 1.)

Chapter 1.

"Resident Deck Twenty Six, Yellow Circle," the elevator said. The doors opened onto an enormous number 26. Beneath that was a big yellow circle. Too big to miss. Practical signage for your modern retirement spaceship. 

I pushed my supply cart out of the elevator. Around the corner, the black reception desk was lit from behind and from beneath. It glowed warmly, even in the bright medical hallway lighting. Psychologically calculated light. 

Veronica was...

a softer world was ever friday

the night forest burns

(An excerpt from the current draft of my sci fi retirement ship / dog novel "CARGO" )

-

I knelt at the door with the wrench, and I ran my fingers over the door panel, looking for the hidden latch. I found it, and the panel slid down an inch, revealing the bolts that held it securely in place. Kneeling on the floor, I felt the far off boom, in the distance. Mitchie whimpered from underneath the bed. 

"It's okay. Hey," I tried to tousle his fur but he clambered deeper in...

Walking Mitchie

Walking Mitchie was a goddamn ordeal.

Every corner we turned, he had to meet someone new. It was exhausting. We weren't even to the train yet, and we'd stopped four times. Sometimes we stopped to smell an invisible spot on the floor. Then we turned another corner and oh look, there was a man minding his own business. He had a mustache. I guess we'd better go over and see what he smells like. 

For me, Mitchie had no interest in wagging his tail. But for strangers? For stranger...

the glow pond

When Mitchie and I reached the forest deck, he stayed close to my feet until we were on the soft soil path of the park. I wondered if he liked the gentle way the ground held his feet. The wood chips and sliding mud. It was quiet here. The night forest was more alive and yet more private than the daytime section of the forest deck. Both of them had their charms, but I wanted to show Mitchie the glow pond. When I am getting to know somebody, when I think it matters, I always feel like I want to...

home again home again

some people can't be rescued (Untitled Sci Fi book scene)

We walked back to the elevator and waited. When it arrived, Soup gave me a long look, sighed, and then pushed a button on the control panel.

"Think of it this way," I said. "Maybe saving the ship will be an adventure! You'll be a hero!" Soup nodded. But he clearly liked the idea of adventure more than being a hero. He really wanted the ship to fly off into the abyss.

Mitchie was not happy when we arrived on the captain's floor. 

He started squirming in my arms like craz...

hello

After work, Jonathan was in the hallway, holding up the wall again. There was a beagle sitting patiently at his feet. She seemed like a well behaved dog. Mitchie, meanwhile, was already trying to shove his face under her tail. She just sat there, staring at me with bored eyes while my dog nuzzled her hello hole.

putting the A in asynchronous orbit (scene)

"I didn't throw anyone out an airlock," Marlene said. "I feel good about that. I locked them up. Just for now. They have food and water and they have their service animals. Some of them are locked in a hallway. The botanist and Jo are locked in a hallway. But I made sure they have food. And some pillows. That was difficult. Getting pillows into the hallway there without them escaping. And I'll let them out when there's no turning back. I will. When it is too late to slow the ship down. When s...

who knows why computers do anything

Mitchie was absolutely in love with Marlene, he couldn't take his eyes off her. It wasn't like the strangers in the hallway, where he was excited to smell someone new and then move on. He hung on her every word. 

I could hear the small, two car train coming down the track toward us.

"What was hiding?" I asked. I wanted her to keep talking.

"Jo treats me like I'm new, Mitchie. Because I volunteer for the job. Like your Charlie does! We're old, not dead. I know how to hid...

somebody to love

"Hi Mitchie," I said. "I'm Charles."

He only had one good eye, but in the clear bright eye there was something that seemed very real. He didn't hold himself like one of the service robots. He didn't want to cheer me up, or tell me how smart I was. 

If anything, he looked tired. He looked like he just needed a home. 

"It must be a hard life out there for ugly robot dogs."

Maybe that's what my psychological profile had told the ship. Maybe that's a kind of serv...

Singularity

When actual AI wakes up, this is what it will be like.

Chapter 2. - untitled sci fi (mitchie).

2.

I dressed up nice for dinner. My goin' out clothes. I wore a proper shirt with a starched collar. I wore slacks and a vest. It was my first time taking Mitchie out in public, and I was nervous. Self conscious. 

I know it shouldn't have mattered, but it did. People were going to see me with a service animal, and I was embarrassed. I felt stupid for being embarrassed, but I was. 

What should I care if people looked at us? They're gonna look at someone.

It'...

terrible businessman

I'm really focused on this science fiction novel. Charlie and Mitchie.

Revisiting the mix of melancholy and sweetness that I'm so drawn to. Chapter 2 is done now. Polishing to post very soon.

I should be promoting my other books instead of writing! I'm a terrible businessman. God!

Grandma horror: https://asofterworld.com/joey/grandmother.php

Dirty stories: 2025-06-27 07:03:05 +0000 UTC View Post

in defence of Marlene

"She's not people," the man said, giving me a long look. "She's cargo." He was maybe thirty years old, and he was wearing a uniform for one of the fabrication decks. Out here working a long shift to make some money to take back to his family on Earth, no doubt. "She should be in her hospital bed, letting the rest of us do our jobs." He gave me a curt nod.

"Your mother must be very proud," I said. "In a retirement home somewhere, I'm guessing?"

"My mother is dead," he replied, sayi...

"untitled Charlie and Mitchie project" Ch1 rewrite1

Hello. This is an expansion/rewrite of the first chapter. I'm finding the right balance. I want there to be warmth and kindness all through this, while still propelling the book forward. Science fiction was the first genre I ever loved, and all my first stories were science fiction. Charlie and Mitchie are reinvented here, (They come from my horror novel 2025-06-24 13:32:56 +0000 UTC View Post