The Bookian » Dystopia

Soon I Will Be Invincible: The Movie

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:08:17 +0000

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, one of the newest, flattest, most comic-book-like written, and most excellent, contemporary translation and update of a paratactic Rabelaisian Le Quart-Livre of Pantagruel, is a true contribution to that canonical and oft-under metabolized taxonomic clade of literature dealing with the inhuman fables of a fictional character… and one of the best examples of this subgenre to arrive. Usually exhibiting symptoms of the referred pain of author-characters such as Micheal Chabon or Art Spiegleman or any of the new, so-called, hyper intelligent graphic comic novelists, Austin Grossman in Soon I Will Be Invincible is a breath of fresh radioactive vapor fumes. He, unlike many of the others in the genre, clearly knows his medium: in a story about comic book characters, questions of authenticity of character must be thrown out the window entirely if any authenticity of character is to survive! As much as we like Chabon, when writing about boyhood, or about comic books, please: do justice to the medium! We dont see world famous sculptors known for the way they apply color to their surface, or the way world-class painters paint three dimensionally, for a good reason: sculpture is about sculpting. Painting is about paint. And stories about childhood topics are not reflective. In an era in which worlds are created and destroyed at the drop of a pin or a brandable buck, and the oracle of the divine bottle is spun in attempts to resolve the question of the marriage of Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, to her own vows… Nay, but tis for naught? Shall the paratactic hyper-lists of past, fictional, actions of the gods-who-walk-among-us, those bringers-of-us-to-histories, must these lists be created by super-minds who have successfully navigated those very worlds they recreate? The answer to Should superheroes be making their living by charging people to beat them up is clearly a game played by such game players of Titan: The new super-authors of our current generation must be those unafraid to speak in the secret languages of the day- “Born of Fire, Born of God,” our ancestors have said, that “Art is born of Humiliation”: and for those who cower, afraid to look fully upon the face of our modern lives, and absorb the inherent humiliation when subjecting ourselves to seemingly pedantic roles of Fantastic Literature, or Amazing Stories! or Worlds of IF, or Captain Justice and the Hero League, will become lost as the next generation arises, and recreates the world as it should be: populated by the class of those who wear skin-tight pajamas and attempt, once again, to destroy the world! – reviewed by Dr. Impossibles Shysteroo

Amnesia Moon

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:43:17 +0000

I was pretty sure I read this book a long time ago, but then, I thought, hey… maybe not. Maybe it was someone else who thought they had forgotten who had read the book. Even though, if whomever it was who had forgotten about who had read the book, had actually read the book and then forgotten, they could just be confusing it with someone they knew who had read another book instead but mistakenly thought it was this book, and for some reason was able to remember it. Or something like that. A fast read, and the style is sharp. Definately pynchon inspired west coast kulture language thing going on. Some direct cloning from PKD going on, but hey, they world could use ten to the tenth to the tenth times more dick. say it loud, say it proud. P. K. D. P. K. D. P. K. D. P. K. D. P. K. D. ! – reviewed by CHaoS

The Solid Confessor: Science Fiction Classics

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:30:17 +0000

Ab.So.Lute.Ly. Demented. This book has awesome art and is crazy. If you open it like the I-Ching, and start reading anywhere, it says something demented. The back-copy marketing-goo says its like textual arcology, and yes. It is. As far as I have been able to figure out, its kind of like reading that early Russell Hoban book, Riddley Walker but with all the crazyness of William Burroughs, theory of the Strugatsky Brothers, science fiction Witkiewicz and Franz Kafkas The Castle plus I dont know, Marshall McLuhan, old sci-fi pulp magazine writing from Astounding Magazine… its like reading an economic textbook noir thriller biology textbook on panspermia with thomas pynchon on virtual philip k. dick drugs. I admit I havent finished it yet. Its too demented. Ive been lugging it around like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy for reference whenever I encounter the world of the Straights. I give it Three Full Stigmata fresh from Palmer Eldritch.
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From the Publisher…
The anonymous cult classic of the early machine age “The Solid Confessor” has intrigued readers for over a decade: its literary dementia is akin to the best of 1960s Russian Science Fiction set within a gritty, distinctly American Beat literature perspective. Often compared to everything from Economic Genre fiction to Textual Arcology, “The Solid Confessor” continues to defy convention and easy definition: an apocalyptic, dense, horrific, hyper-referential document of the intrusion of information science upon the biologic, “The Solid Confessor” is in the end a documentary of dystopic technocracy. This edition, lavishly illustrated by Kjell Otterness and with a new forward by A.J. Specktowsky, brings our nightmares of a world dominated by science, technology and biological mutation out from the dark and into the present. Vol. VIII in the Machine-Humanist Library.

“Pynchon meets Rabelais with all the clarity of a Godel Proof.”
– Thomas Hubbard, NevYork Science Fiction Reports

“Burroughs on Bukowski. Double dip in Strugatsky, top with McLuhan.”
– Seth Morely, Delmak Herald Book Review – reviewed by William Burroughs

The Crying of Lot 49

Bookian — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:15:17 +0000

Muted horn. stamps. on. Post office. conspiracy. High School exampleism of an era. Written on bed sheets in musty hotels. Something is happening and it goes back in time like image references in jasper johns paintings. in the Great Tradition. Harold Bloom has conniptions. Unreadable. Just Livable. – reviewed by skipper