Thomas C. Fodor

Thomas is a retired software engineer who has had to explain on numerous occasions that writing software and fiction are deeply intertwined.

Born in 1947 in a German Displaced Persons’ Camp, he lived in Budapest from about 1949 until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when his parents dragged him to Canada. After a wasted youth which he spent playing in a rock band for a couple of years, he returned to university where eventually he earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing (an unfortunate decision which intimidated him from attempting to write for years).

As an author, he explores the absurd machinery beneath ordinary reality—whether cosmic, bureaucratic, or existential—and reveals the comedy, fragility, and wonder hidden inside it. His work blends speculative philosophy, deadpan humor, and playful formal experimentation to create stories that ask serious questions in delightfully unserious ways.

Across fiction that ranges from cosmic satire to mock field guides, he examines the human urge to categorize the uncategorizable, regulate the unregulatable, and make meaning out of forces that defy explanation. Musicality, rhythm, and conceptual patterning shape his narratives, while metafiction, pseudo-science, and bureaucratic parody provide the tools for dismantling the illusions of certainty.

Whether charting the universe’s First Mistake or navigating the procedural chaos of a fictional tourist destination, his writing treats the world as an elaborate joke told by an unreliable narrator—sometimes the universe itself, sometimes the institutions we build to make sense of it. The result is a distinctive blend of intelligence, imagination, and dark wit: comedy with philosophical depth, philosophy with comedic bite.

Thomas creates books for readers who relish ideas, embrace strangeness, and enjoy stories that challenge the boundaries between science, myth, administration, and the absurd. His work invites readers to laugh at the incomprehensible—and perhaps understand it a little more by laughing.

And - by the way - there is no logical explanation why people submitting short bios speak of themselves in the third person.