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Audiences were outraged by D. Harlan Wilson's first play, The Dark Hypotenuse, when it opened in Copenhagen in 2012. Not only did it bear the weird, estranging aesthetic that distinguishes his novels and short fiction, the play contained scenes where viewers were attacked by actors as well as a variety of endangered animals, among them an African elephant that was euthanized onstage. The Dark Hypotenuse appeared in Wilson's first collection of dramatic entertainments. This second collection includes his latest work in the field. In Jackanape, a murderous dinner jacket wreaks havoc on a community of innocent narcissists who struggle to stay alive while negotiating the rigors of the School of Life. The Fingermen portrays a support group whose members have each lost an index finger; their stories reveal their insecurities as much as the nonsense that typifies contemporary existence. In both cases, Wilson satirizes with a hammer, oscillating between hilarity and solemnity as he invites us to think about the relationship between self-delusion and (in)sanity.
"In BRUT, Jaffe addresses an extraordinary range of films, writers, painters, philosophers, and "outsider" artists, each with the brevity, clarity, and dramatic understatement that typify his prose. Nina Simone, Marlon Brando, Albert Camus, the Black Panthers, Angela Davis, Jean Genet, Sylvia Plath, Clarice Lispector, Dick Gregory, James Baldwin, Simone de Beauvoir, Mark Rothko, Alberto Giacometti, William Blake, Greta Thunberg, Frantz Fanon, Antonin Artaud, Man Ray, Dada, Che Guevara, John Coltrane, Pasolini ... in every instance, it is not just the mind of the artist, but the heart-mind, the felt passion, that Jaffe teases out of his subject with uncanny nuance."--Back cover
Set against a haunting Martian landscape, The Song My Enemies Sing is a surreal, disquieting science fiction vision of murder, revolution, manipulation and mystery. Ray Spector's search for meaning leads him to a teenage Black Panther named Eli Jones, the missionary Philipé Olmos, sometime television star Richard Parish, and Ingrid Auer, who dreams of becoming a terrorist. Under the shimmering Grid drawn by the swarm satellites encircling the planet, with fading memories of an apocalyptic California, the Australian outback, and the jungles of Mexico, their obsessions form strange patterns, dangerous relationships, and alliances across time and species. Science fiction legend Barry N. Malzberg, the first recipient of the John W. Campbell Award, describes James Reich's fifth novel "as a history of science fiction form, origin and development, and merciless in its refusal to pander to the easier implications of its material." In the lineage of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, William Burroughs' Nova trilogy, J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick, these distant episodes will possess you.
City Primeval traces a cultural migration, from the defining historical moments of New York Post-Punk and No Wave, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and Reunification, to the Velvet Revolution and the Prague Renaissance. Assembled in this volume are personal documentaries of place and time by key writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, artists and performers of the New York, Berlin and Prague underground scenes from the late 1970s to the present.
The space program has finally lost its novelty and a jaded public hardly notices another moon launch. Skillful PR admen preserve the illusion that the missions have become routine, but Colonel Richard Martin has a different story ... of panic in deep space, of crewmen pushed beyond their breaking points, of official indifference towards his own shattered life. Martin had been to the moon and back, but he would never be sent there again, suffering a nervous breakdown in orbit. He is put under wraps until the pilot of a capsule loaded with nuclear weaponry goes berserk and unleashes a nightmare that threatens to consume the world. Only Martin can end it ... The Falling Astronauts is a paradigmatic example of New Wave science fiction that goes where no man has gone before, but also goes insane. This special anti-oedipal edition includes an afterward by Umberto Rossi.
Two astronauts travel on the first manned expedition to the planet Venus. When the mission is mysteriously aborted and the ship returns to Earth, the Captain is missing and the First Officer, Harry M. Evans, can't explain what happened. Under psychiatric evaluation and interrogation, Evans provides conflicting accounts of the Captain's disappearance, incriminating both himself and lethal Venusian forces in the Captain's murder. As the explanations pyramid and the supervising psychiatrist's increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story falter, Evans' condition and his inability to tell the "truth" present terrifying expressions of humanity's incompetence, the politics of space exploration, and the intricate dynamics of psycho-sexual relations . . .Originally published in 1972, BEYOND APOLLO incited controversy, polarizing critics and fans despite winning the first John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Always disinclined to sell out or compromise his vision, Malzberg became disillusioned with the SF genre, which purported to be THE genre of innovation. Paradoxically, many SF editors and publishers worried about unsettling readers' comfort zones and insisted that authors write in accordance with a set of rules, formulas and codes. Malzberg would neither heel nor kneel; disillusioned, he unofficially retired from the genre in the late seventies and hasn't looked back. What he produced as a science fiction writer, however, remains among the best published during the twentieth century-important in its historical context, but also entertaining and thought-provoking in its own right.Dark, acerbic, funny and smart, BEYOND APOLLO may be Malzberg's greatest accomplishment. This special anti-oedipal edition includes an introduction by novelist James Reich and a study guide that will prove especially useful in classroom settings.
A man tumbles through wild surf, half drowned, and collapses on a moonlit beach. When he regains consciousness, he has no memory of who he is or where he came from. He knows only that the woman who washed ashore with him has disappeared sometime in the night, and that he has awakened in a surreal landscape of savage beauty-a mysterious watery world encircled by a thin spine of land. Aided by strange tribesmen, he travels to the cove of the spine kings, a brutal race that has enslaved the woman and several of the tribesmen. That is only the beginning of his quest, as he struggles to reclaim his identity and decipher the mysteries of this cruel, dreamlike place. Haunting and lyrical, filled with uncommon beauty and terrific peril, A Short, Sharp Shock is an enthralling story written by one of science fiction's most respected talents.KIM STANLEY ROBINSON is the author of over twenty books and has won every major award in the science fiction genre. Originally published in 1990, A Short, Sharp Shock remains a singular work in his oeuvre. This anti-oedipal edition includes an insightful introduction by esteemed scholar Robert Crossley.
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