A Stowaway to the Thanatosphere: My Voyage Beyond Apollo with Norman Mailer

In 1972, two men sneaked onto a cruise ship in order to warn Norman Mailer about a plot for the rich to inhabit the moon:

“‘They’ve cleverly organized this thing on a ship, you dig, that way no one can crash it,’ mused Forcade. He theorized that the cruise was just a cover for an elite conclave conspiring to jettison Earth once they’d totally ravaged it, and establish an exclusive colony for the rich and powerful in space. Everyone else would be left to fight over dwindling resources and perish in the terrestrial ruins. ‘Mailer is either in on the scam or they’ve suckered him into it. We have got to get on board that ship,’ Tom said, ‘find out what these motherfuckers are up to, blow their cover, and rescue Mailer before it’s too late.'”

“Under the influence of a fresh shipment of Tom’s Columbian import, I thought it seemed like an entirely reasonable plan. Or at least a fine Caribbean escape from the Manhattan winter and the relentless political chill that had set in. So I became one of the two stowaways on the Voyage Beyond Apollo.”

Author: Rex Weiner
Published: Jan 2, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,575 words)

Longreads Best of 2012: Isaac Fitzgerald

Isaac Fitzgerald is managing editor of The Rumpus, co-founder of Pen & Ink, and uses Twitter.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 2, 2013

Longreads Best of 2012: Michael Kruse

Michael Kruse, an award-winning staff writer at the Tampa Bay Times who also contributes to ESPN’s Grantland, this year gave a  TEDx talk and had a story make the anthology Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 2, 2013

Look Out—He’s Got a Phone!

Medical devices, cars, and home utilities can all be controlled using a smartphone—which means security flaws in our devices could have deadly consequences:

“I asked Jack if he thought anyone would actually use smartphones to try to fiddle with other people’s pacemakers, or change the dosage of their medications, or compromise their eyesight, or take control of their prosthetic limbs, or raise the volume of their hearing aids to a paralyzing shriek. Will this become a tempting new way to settle a score or hurry up an inheritance? He said, ‘Has there ever been a box connected to the Internet that people haven’t tried to break into?’ He had a point: a few years ago, anonymous vandals inserted flashing animated images into an Epilepsy Foundation online forum, triggering migraines and seizure-like reactions in some unfortunate people who came across them. (The vandals were never found.) Jack was reluctant to go into detail about what he thinks the future may hold. ‘I’m not comfortable trying to predict exact scenarios,’ he said. But then he added, calm as a State Department spokesman, ‘I can say that I wouldn’t want to discover a virus in my insulin pump.'”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Dec 19, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,764 words)

The Game Savers: How A Tiny Company Gives Neglected Japanese Games New Life In America

How a nine-person video game company is bringing little known Japanese games to the U.S.:

“If you play video games, you’ve probably played something that came out of Japan. Many of gaming’s biggest and brightest series—Mario, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil—were developed by Eastern companies, then translated and programmed for North American or European machines.

“But for every Japanese game you’ve seen on U.S. store shelves, there are 10 more that never made it over here. Two particularly infamous examples are Nintendo’s Mother 3 and Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Type-0. The list goes on and on.

“So why do so many games seem to slip through the cracks? While it’s tempting to imagine a world where one finger snap can turn a Japanese game English, the process of bringing a Japanese game to the West—a process known as localization—is timely and expensive. Not only do games have to be translated, they often have to be rewritten entirely for English cadence and Western sensibilities. The best translators are creative writers as well, adding a dash of their own humor and charm to replace all the Japanese puns that might get lost in translation.”

Source: Kotaku
Published: Dec 28, 2012
Length: 15 minutes (3,975 words)

A Pickpocket’s Tale

On Apollo Robbins, a pickpocket legend, who wows even the world’s greatest magicians:

“‘The coin’s not in my hand—it couldn’t be. You know why? It’s on your left shoulder.’

“Josh grew increasingly befuddled, as Robbins continued to make the coin vanish and reappear—on his shoulder, in his pocket, under his watchband. In the middle of this, Robbins started stealing Josh’s stuff. Josh’s watch seemed to melt off his wrist, and Robbins held it up behind his back for everyone to see. Then he took Josh’s wallet, his sunglasses, and his phone. Robbins dances around his victims, gently guiding them into place, floating in and out of their personal space. By the time they comprehend what has happened, Robbins is waiting with a look that says, ‘I understand what you must be feeling.’ Robbins’s simplest improvisations have the dreamlike quality of a casual encounter gone subtly awry. He struck up a conversation with a young man, who told him, ‘We’re going to Penn and Teller after this.’

“‘Oh, then you’ll probably want these,’ Robbins said, handing over a pair of tickets that had recently been in the young man’s wallet.”

Author: Adam Green
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 31, 2012
Length: 33 minutes (8,436 words)

On the Rails in Phnom Penh

A writer on tourism and the perils of addiction in Cambodia, as contrasted against her own daily routine in Phnom Penh:

“‘I’ve been robbed seventeen times this year,’ he’d say, eyes trained down in a sallow fury. ‘They take my phone, my money, even my shoes.’

“I didn’t go out much at night but seventeen seemed an excessive number.

”You know he doesn’t actually get robbed,’ Sammy whispered one day.

“‘What do you mean?’

“‘George told me,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘He was coming home one night and saw Paul, outta his mind on ice and God knows what else. Hollering and screaming and carrying on. And get this,’ Sammy pressed his fingertip into the plastic tabletop and leaned in. ‘He was pulling shit outta his pockets. And just throwing it’ — Sammy flicked his thick hands open — ‘everywhere. The security guards were all laughing. And then, then he took off his shoes and chucked those too.’

“Sammy threw his hands up then let them flop back down in his lap.”

Source: Vela Mag
Published: Jun 25, 2012
Length: 17 minutes (4,428 words)

Lawmakers Gone Wild

Lawmakers in Illinois are living large on campaign money. A joint examination by Chicago magazine and the Better Government Association:

“Because it’s perfectly legal to use campaign funds to rent campaign offices, many Illinois politicians, like Welch, choose to locate the offices inside property that they (or a family member) already own. Consider Alderman Mell, 74, he of the Vegas getaway. Mell bought a single-story brick storefront on the Northwest Side for $210,000 in 1996, according to public records; he has owned it free and clear since 2004. From January 2008 to August 2012, he used campaign money to pay himself $231,000 in rent on the place and is currently collecting around $4,450 per month. Mell says that there is nothing illegal about it: “It’s convenient, and it’s in the ward.”

“Vehicles are another major area of questionable campaign spending. The Chicago/BGA analysis found that more than 100 lawmakers and candidates have used nearly $1.3 million in campaign funds to lease or buy cars, often high-end models, over the past five years. For example, Patrick O’Connor, the 40th Ward alderman and the mayor’s floor leader, paid $7,500 in campaign cash to McGrath Lexus in 2011 for a four-door sedan; he has since billed the campaign $1,100 every month in lease payments.”

Published: Dec 17, 2012
Length: 18 minutes (4,622 words)

The Top 10 Longreads of 2012

[Best of 2012] Thanks to everyone who has participated in the Longreads community this year, and to all of our guests who shared their favorite stories of 2012. The below list represents our editors' favorite stories of the year, for both nonfiction and fiction.

Longreads is edited by Mark Armstrong and Mike Dang, with Kjell Reigstad, Joyce King Thomas, Hakan Bakkalbasi, Jodi Ettenberg and Erika Kussmann.

Thanks to all the writers and publishers who create outstanding work.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 28, 2012

Stand Up Speak Out

Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey and Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison were sexually abused when they were young. What happened, and how they healed:

“The bad cop finally got through to her when she won the U.S. Open in 2007 and felt absolutely nothing and told him she was quitting for good. He invited her to his house, this silver-haired man with the curt air of an old European farmer bent over his grapes in search of fungus, and he sat with her in his backyard watching the steam rise from a lake at dawn. ‘You know, kid,’ he said, ‘what happened, happened. It was a terrible thing, but some day you have to get over it. It doesn’t have to define you. You have a chance to do something great with your life, but I can’t want it for you. Terrible things happen to people every day, but they’ve got to get back up.’

“No magic happened. She wasn’t healed. She needed to quit dropping out of therapy and stay with it long enough to dig deeper and see wider. She needed to keep going through the motions long enough to begin harvesting all the fruit that sports dangles alongside its thorns, the sense of purpose and belonging, the team dinners and encouragement and teasing and pranks. But the deep truth of Big Jim’s words finally sank into her: Yes, sex abuse had occurred to her, but sex abuse wasn’t her. And for crissakes, Kid, stop feeling guilty and put that coach in the slammer before he does it to someone else!

“She wavered, but finally, on a winter day in 2008, she walked into a federal courtroom in Dayton to confront her former coach.”

Author: Gary Smith
Published: Dec 17, 2012
Length: 37 minutes (9,332 words)