BLIT (short story)

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"BLIT" is a 1988 science fiction short story by the British writer David Langford, first published in the September–October 1988 issue of Interzone. It was republished in Interzone: The 4th Anthology (1989) and in a 2004 collection of Langford's works, Different Kinds of Darkness, which also contains several sequels. The story introduced the concept of the "basilisk" to science fiction literature. A basilisk is a legendary reptile said to have the power to cause death with a single glance. In the context of "BLIT", it is a type of highly dangerous image that contains patterns exploiting flaws in the structure of the human mind to produce a lethal reaction, effectively "crashing" the mind the way a computer program crashes when given data that it fails to process. It does this by triggering thoughts that the mind is physically or logically incapable of thinking. The story marked a departure from Langford's typically humorous storytelling style.

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