About

Simon McNeil is the author of The Black Trillium, a story of revolution and martial arts set in the ruins of Toronto. This novel is published by Brain Lag Publishing.

He is a project manger who deals with the minutiae of public utility and health care software projects and an essayist who enjoys seriously over-thinking genre media through the lens of structuralist and post-structuralist theory. He is a life-long martial artist, has published several articles in Kung Fu Magazine and he’s probably a little bit too fond of kung fu movies.

He lives in Charlottetown, PEI with his goblin-like dog, precocious cat, even-more-precocious daughter and his wife who has happily laid out rules to prevent the sword-through-glass-lampshade incident from ever happening again. The Black Trillium is his first novel.

8 thoughts on “About”

  1. I’d hoped to reply to “Complex Systems, bees, lobster and Kitchen Cabinets” but I see no way to do that directly.

    I came across your blog while looking into “two-eyed seeing.” (Can you tell me anything more?) As it happens, I’m also into philosophy, with an eye on postmodernism and its implications for ontology–plus I’ve been in Ch’town every summer since at least 1985; we have a cottage up Morell way. So I thought we might have something to talk about.

  2. Hi AJ, around the time I wrote that essay I’d had a previous one go viral in all the worst corners of the internet and was inundated with harassment for a few weeks. As a precaution I locked comments on all of the (at the time) most recent blog articles. I apologize for this inconvenience. I’m mostly still learning about two-eyed seeing myself. I’d suggest the best resource on the island is L’Nuey as this is an ontology which comes directly out of a Mi’Kmaq tradition. Their understanding is going to be stronger than mine, and to be honest, most of what I know of this ontology derives directly from them or Elder Albert Marshall and UINR. With that said, I think it’s great to approach it from the perspective of a Sartrean framework where any object is composed of an infinite series of appearances each of which share in the being of the object unmediated by any sort of transcendental essence. As such, experiencing an object from multiple non-contradictory perspectives can allow for a deeper understanding of the object than an observation from a single direction.

  3. Oh and if you do want to meet up sometime when doing so is safe again, I’m in New Glasgow, PE year-round and honestly don’t travel much these days so do let me know.

  4. I’m still waiting for a post to go viral 🙂 — now I’m curious. Anyway, glad it’s settled down for you.

    I’ll be in PEI this summer, even if I have to quarantine (again). We often visit the gardens in New Glasgow, and we try to attend the Clyde River festival if there’s room. I’ll try to remember to look you up then.

  6. Hi, Simon.
    As part of my own blog, which is wandering into the concept of “story,” I’d like to post a polite but critical review of your article on “The Misapprehension of Mythology.” Would you be OK with that?

Leave a comment