"In good times, magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times, people will sell their souls for magic cures and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."- Fritz Leiber, "Poor Superman," quoted by Paul McAuley
The Story of TOM GILL PREDICTS
- TOM GILL PREDICTS began in Walnut Creek, CA in 1978 as a challenge from my Del Valle High School physics teacher Raleigh Ellisen. Tired of me inserting snarky comments into homework assignments, he dared me to produce a daily public display of wit. It started as a "wall poster” of wacky stories and predictions, in the tradition of 大字, posted each weekday at 7:45. Later, "TGP" was a UC Davis campus newspaper column, then a pioneer hardcopy underground "zine," with hundreds of subscribers in at least four continents at its maximum. TGP’s renowned, amazing “psychic predictions” included the death of John Wayne, the Space Shuttle Challenger accident, and the rise of the Solidarity Movement in Gdansk. But TGP was best known for its humor; offbeat news, satire, parodies, puns, wacky zaniness, mascot Mickey Moose, the bizarre cartoon Gegenbauer, the opporknockety tunes of Sister Sludge, its annual Person of the Year and Top Ten lists, and more fun. Going dark in ~1990, it returned in 1997 as an email-only piece, and in Y2K as a web site. In the 2010s, TOM GILL PREDICTS lives again! Follow @tomgillpredicts on Twitter, and subscribe to this blog. Email us at tomgillpredicts@gmail.com
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