Why an "edifice"? Why "online"?

A brief note on the history of names

January 26, 2009

I'm not a full-time punster, but sometimes cheap word-play gives me a great deal of pleasure.

Edifice Rex doesn't "mean" anything. Rather, the name descends from my early experiments in publishing.

Back in the early 1980s, when I was in high-school, I edited and "published", via a friend's father's office photo-copier, an arts magazine we called The House of the Dying Tree — don't ask what (if anything) that meant, either; it's too long ago.

The Dying Tree led, in time, to my first zine, Tenement, which was followed by a three-issue run of (you guessed it) Edifice Rex in the 1990s.

Edifice Rex was a zine with magazine pretentions, a throw-back to the popular fiction magazines of the early 20th century. Considering I had no budget, no distribution system and that fiction magazines had already dwindled to a few science fiction and mystery titles (along with "little" literary magazines, which generally bored me to tears when I tried them), it's no surprise that the third issue was the last issue.

And so this website/blog/call-it-what-you-will; like so much else on the internet, Edifice Rex Online is a work in progress. As of this writing it seems to be a hybrid — or mutt. It is at once a place for me to display and promote my fiction, to praise or trash the powers-that-be, and to indulge my relatively late interest in blatant self-indulgence.

Not "no focus" perhaps, but not a lot of focus. Nevertheless, I'll do my best to ensure it's entertaining reading — and I hope you tell me whether you think it is — or not.

This version, the third, is not so much a visual revision as it is technical. After far too long a delay, I have taught myself the rudiments of Drupal, a content-management system which allows me to worry about, well, this site's content rather than mucking about with HTML coding every time I want to add something to it. Happily, with the new system, I can now add items to the site as easily as I could post to my Livejournal or to my Facebook accounts.

Exactly how Edifice Rex Online evolves is, of course, one of those "known unknowns" that will only be revealed in the fullness of time. I hope you (yes, you and you and you — but not you!) come along for the ride.