Richter Review Thing: Nihil's Retina

This is a dumb idea, huh?

The creative tank is presently empty, which gives me too much time to reflect on things I’ve already written, already published, and how they are flawed. Since farming reviews is laughably not my forte, might as well do it myself—huh?

I’ll begin at the beginning. With the first book I ever finished writing and thought: I would not be entirely embarrassed to publish this. A little novella called Nihil’s Retina. The title is probably the first mistake. I was trying to avoid stealing Oblivion’s Eye, which was already taken by the band Psalm Zero. “Retina” is a good word. “Nihil’s” not so much. (My father had to look it up.) It’s a bit obscure, and no one can agree how to pronounce it, and either way you pronounce it (Nile’s or Neel’s), it doesn’t quite flow into “Retina.” Shucks.

[available in paperback or ebook formats here]

I still think the front cover looks good (my mother-in-law couldn’t figure out what it was), but the jacket design as a whole isn’t great. I used KindleDirectPublishing’s built-in jacket designer, which was in its janky beta stage at the time. Plus, I didn’t take the time to format the interior so that it would reach the required number of pages for text on the spine. So there is no text on the spine. (I’ll probably reformat the whole inside and outside some day, just to get to sleep at night.)

As for the content of Nihil’s Retina—a bleak and (I hope) comical internal monologue rattled off by one of the only two survivors of the apocalypse—I am surprised, five years later, not to have too many harsh feelings about it. It’s a little silly in some places, a touch dry in others. Considering how little sci-fi I read, plus the fact that I never intended to write any, I think I did alright. It began as a kind of joke: The plot of a film in a much larger and very failed novel about a filmmaker. In between stalled drafts of two failing novels, I suddenly got the bright idea to write and publish something short, just to stick my toe in the water of self-publishing. This is what came out.

At the time of publishing, I belonged to a niche community of efriends, many of whom graciously supported my work and a few of whom even more graciously wrote reviews. I don’t remember any of them having an unkind word to say or even any constructive criticism. Those were the days….

I still have no qualms about the…uh…shocking way I ended the story. That was part of the original idea—an indulgence that was too darkly funny to me to resist. The one thing I semi-regret about that scene is the flagrant use of…uh…harsh language. Not that I have any problem with harsh language. But did the narrator—the last living human being—really need to call his friend Crowley—the last “living” android—a cunt? A slut? I’m not sure. Perhaps it was just a smidge over the top.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother to change a word.

Nihil’s Retina remains my best-selling book for two reasons: (1) Genre fiction sells, and (2) I had friends back when I wrote it. I have plans to address the flaws in my other works soon, as a springboard into reviewing things (books, maybe records) made by other people. I don’t know who if anyone will read this, but if you do, and you find the concept too stupid/pathetic/embarrassing, please let me know in the comments.

—G