If you ever saw Collin Piprell at a meeting of the Bangkok Writers Guild, a meetup I ran for 12 years until COVID struck, you mightn’t have guessed that he did not live on this planet. Collin inhabited worlds few would venture into, worlds where alternate realities, technology, chaos and virtual futures tormented oddly retro humans, some of whom might have been at home in Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Outwardly, though, you’d see a barrel-chested, shy, Hemingway-like man who hated being photographed and always looked like he was on the verge of leaving. He could be long-winded as easily as blunt, civil as easily as sarcastic. These are the manifestations of a mind that is always churning. Collin’s tongue could never keep up with his inner muse. He has been a nomad in his life, moving from the academic airs of McGill University to lives as a Canadian miner, an elephant tracker, a scuba diver and, if I remember rightly, and an Oxford don.