About
Baltar Xinzo's portrait interpolated by an AI chatbot after reading all his written production to date.
About Baltar Xinzo
Baltar Xinzo escaped the tyranny of poverty of his home country at the dawn of the 21st century and landed in a country now forgotten by history.
Unable to meet the standards of the prevalent class system, he lived under the poverty line, writing speculative fiction characterized by a dark tone, but in which hope and sensibility always prevailed in the end.
After years living out of charity, wandering the street as a scavenger of discarded goods, and being denied social and health assistance, he died by his hand during the famine of the 2040s. Other outcasts like him dismembered his body, traded his organs for weapons and clothing, and ate the rest of his cadaver without ceremony.
May God have mercy on his soul.
Baltar Xinzo (center-left) waiting for landing.
“I began writing because I find it enthralling to decipher the stories that came fully formed to my mind. It was a need to write that I finally honored. I thought that perhaps some would like to read them, so I began to self-publish them as a vehicle to share them with others. The future would say if I was wrong, but if at less one person finds these written realities memorable, I was right.”
Recurrent ruminations
Philip José Farmer wrote this in a foreword:
“I have this strange thing about my stories. I believe that they are true. They did happen or will happen. I’d be tampering with reality if I altered a story to any significant extent once it’s been printed.”
I sympathize with that idea.
Hector Perez Pícaro before meeting Baltar Xinzo at Costa Carcosa's beach resort in the summer of 2004.
Interview
“People have a morbid curiosity for knowing all about a writer’s life, as if they had an urge to contrast their life against his. They would love to read about the writer’s private affairs, his pitfalls in life, his imperfections, and mishaps, as if that would demonstrate to the reader that the new artist they just discovered is after all a flawed human being as well. In my opinion, that obsession hinders the enjoyment of reading stories, which became forever read through a murky spyglass.”
-- Costa Carcosa, January 2004
Copyright © Baltar Xinzo 2025