Peter Merrens
Author of fiction, essays and popular science, shaped by Armenian-Jewish roots and a life across six countries. Writes from rural Kent under his Medlara imprint, lectures at UT Dallas, and builds iPhone games — As…As… is the latest.
Gallery
Why aviolicide is a poor choice
ScienceKilling Grandpa is easy. Explaining why you still exist is harder. A field guide to time travel in fiction, with 110 works put through the grandfather test.
Proximal God: The inspiration and the journey
ProseHow a dream became a novel, then two books, and finally one again. The inspiration and the long journey behind Proximal God.
Guaranteed to Make You Simile
TechnologyOn building As…As… with Claude, and an invitation to build your own impossible thing the same way.
The Living Wilstach
ProseA Broadway press agent spent twenty-two years cataloguing sixteen thousand similes. I have turned them into a quarter of a million, and the count rises every January.
The Permissioned Economy
PhilosophyHow post-war Britain nationalised the right to build, why the permissioned economy it created is now stalling the country, and what to do instead.
On Englishness
PhilosophySomeone in a pub told me Englishness cannot be defined. I don't accept that. To be English is to live within paradox: reserve masking passion, modesty cloaking pride, irony guarding sincerity.