While I have largely relied on personal experience and wild invention in conceiving these stories, I have discovered a number of subconscious nods to other works during the course of putting this project together. In some cases, a mere line served as an inspiration that sent me down a rabbit hole. In other cases, I was more explicitly acknowledging my debts to the books, films, and music that have greatly inspired me for this audio drama. I list the influences that I am aware of here to absolve myself of any modest creative thefts, although we are all the inevitable product of our influences.

Robert Altman, The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman, McCabe and Mrs. Miller
The Amelia Project
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Maria Bamford
L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
Samuel Beckett, Various works
Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For
The Bright Sessions
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents
John Carpenter, Big Trouble in Little China
John Carpenter, They Live
Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker
David Cecil, Melbourne
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
G.K. Chesterton, Various columns for The London News
Don Coscarelli, Bubba Ho-Tep
Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes
Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self
Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren
Emily Dickinson, “Alone, I cannot be” (Poem 298)
Doctor Who
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Double
George Eliot, “Wedded Love”
Stanley Ellin, The Specialty of the House and Other Stories
Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough
Sigmund Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year Old Boy”
Sigmund Freud, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”
Terry Gilliam, Time Bandits
Terry Gilliam, Brazil
Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe
Moss Hart & George Kaufman, The Man Who Came to Dinner
Howard Hawks, Bringing Up Baby
Howard Hawks, His Girl Friday
John Hughes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
I Am Kloot, I Am Kloot
William James, “The Will to Believe”
Gayl Jones, The Healing
Jessica Jones
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
James Joyce, Ulysses
Joy Division, Closer
The Kinks, Something Else by the Kinks
Stanley Kubrick, The Shining
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, The Secret Memoirs of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Mike Leigh, Abigail’s Party
Mike Leigh, Naked
Richard Linklater, Before Sunset
Horace and Pete
Theodore F. MacManus, “The Penalty of Leadership”
Gregory Macdonald, Fletch
Julie Maroh, Blue is the Warmest Color
William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland
William Ian Miller, The Mystery of Courage
Lydia Millet, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart
The Mindy Project
Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
E. Nesbit, Five Children and It
Dorothy Parker, After Such Pleasures
The Prisoner
Sam Raimi, Army of Darkness
Return Home
Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics
Patti Smith, Horses
Muriel Spark, The Comforters
Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
Star Blazers
Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children
Preston Sturges, Christmas in July
Preston Sturges, The Lady Eve
Tank Girl
Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y
Francois Truffaut, Stolen Kisses
Twin Peaks
Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One
Wooden Overcoats
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the Long Sun
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Kate Zambreno, Green Girl
Roger Zelazny, The Chronicles of Amber
Robert Zemeckis, Back to the Future