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Dreams in 16-bit

August 19, 2025

Fiction, Programming

creativity, literature, poetry, programming, writing

When I make something new, such as a program, a book, or a music album, I often write a blog post about it. Sometimes this might span more than one post – think of The Perfect Gray and its review – but it’s far less often to see two different facets of the same work. Old Memories Murmured in Dreams is a young-love poetry collection I wrote sometime ago. And Dreams in 16-bit is a program I made to add another layer of experiencing this collection.

The text is identical and so is the order of the poems, however, the divisions differ and are accompanied by images stylized as retro computer graphics. Nostalgia and all that, huh?

The artistic focus in on emulating a late 80s/early 90s computer-game conceptual landscape. Note that, apart from the navigation buttons, there is no interactive element in this. Dreams in 16-bit is not an adventure game like Mansion Escape or an interactive experience like The Clock Village. It is only an artistic experience.

Old Memories Murmured in Dreams. Screenshot of the program
Here’s a screenshot of Dreams in 16-bit. A poetry collection with nostalgic tints about one’s youth has to include retro computer graphics, right?
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The Immigrant Trilogy

July 31, 2025

Writing

book, Greece, literature, writing

The Immigrant Trilogy comprises three previously published works: To Cross an Ocean: Apognosis, The Other Side of Dreams, and The Storytelling Cat. These three works can be read independently – indeed, the order doesn’t matter – but only by reading all three of them can a reader appreciate the full scope of the themes involved. In that sense, I view The Immigrant Trilogy not as a collection of three novels but a three-volume novel.

The title gives an indication of the major connective element: immigration. However, although the plots and characters of this work do focus on actual immigration – being a stranger in a strange land – the concept must be examined from a more general, more metaphorical perspective.

We are all immigrants in some aspects of our lives. Some of us might be non-binary, others might be disabled. Perhaps we are single parents, or we try to cope with some mental health challenge. The bottom line is, one way or another we are “misfits”; we (feel that we) don’t belong.

The Immigrant Trilogy, book cover
If you happen to be familiar with my favorite art themes, you’ll recognize the cover of The Immigrant Trilogy as something I’ve painted myself
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Nested Temporality in Writing: The Future Pasts

July 26, 2025

Fiction Writing Tips, Philosophy, Writing

literature, philosophy, time, writing

“The future ain’t what it used to be” is an oft-quoted sentence. It’s supposed to be funny, but few realize it contains a concept that is important to writing and philosophy alike. This sentence contains what I refer to as a nested temporality.

People usually think of the past, the present, and the future as easily defined, separate entities. They also don’t see much ambiguity and in-betweenness in them: there’s one kind of past, one kind of present, one kind of future.

However, this is not true. There are pasts contained in the past (indeed an infinite number of them), and pasts contained in the future. Perhaps it’s more self-evident that there is an infinite number of futures, too, if we went about defining the future as probabilities.

Oh, and if you’re interested in defining the present, good luck with that!

In this post I’m examining the concept of nested temporality – and I will begin with defining it more precisely – in the context of writing fiction. What does a nested temporality bring to a narrative, and how can we use nested temporalities for creative purposes?

Nested Time. Image of clock.
For purely practical reasons, humans tend to think of time as both linear and well-defined. Nothing could be further from the truth…
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