Rarely has early 21st century existence felt as epic, as fictional, as it did in September 2008 when the Lehman collapse triggered an avalanche of ficticious value destruction and often dystopian speculation over the future.

- It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

Captain Thomas Powderdry was poring over the GPS mappings of the Russian front.

The pathways of the heath were carved from stone, little labyrinths in the dry stonewall, mosses and lichens, brooks carving out pathways on the woodland floor. Fungi livid in oranges and reds burst through the muted carpet of grey and burnt umber.

Top tips for lulzy living with Serena Mimsy-Borogrove, our resident teen success coach and lifestylist:

Attached here are two texts by Mute Vol. 2 Issue 4 contributor Giorgio Agostoni :

A Text for an Exhibition that regards Sound as a Weapon

Silence and Material

This year’s prize for best long-titled left communist analysis of an American literary classic goes hands down to Loren Goldner’s Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne And The Antemosaic Cosmic Man – Race, Class And The Crisis Of Bourgeois Ideology In An American Renaissance Writer

Jerrel is about to celebrate her twenty-first birthday. It's the special she's been waiting for all her young life - the day on which she joins the Hive, in body as much as in spirit. This is more than your average holy communion for young Jerrel - a surgically facilitated rite of passage from which there's no turning back. A short story by David McKee