Absinth & The Song of Synth [signed double novel] - Hardcover

Sebastien Doubinsky

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848634552 ISBN 13: 9781848634558

Publisher: PS Publishing, 2012

Synopsis

Markus Olsen is a former anarchist who several years before, acting as part of a group called the Potemkin Crew, hacked into military systems and succeeded in bringing down five war satellites, costing the government billions of dollars. Sentenced to thirty years in prison, Markus has cut a deal with the government that allows him to live free in return for his service in ferreting out other criminally inclined hackers. Free, that is, except for the wearing of an ankle monitor and the assorted complexes that have arisen from his betrayal of his principles and his compatriots this betrayal has led to his addiction to Synth, a drug of infinite consolation that seeks to temporize the addict s every thought and feeling, outfitting them in a more pleasing contextual dress, protecting him from the visceral truth by recasting his experiences as drama and hallucination. Synth, you might say, is narrative, a more functional, efficient and effulgent version of the story with which we caption our lives it s as though you were to hire a talented professional to handle the work normally given over to your subconscious. The Song of Synth is, to an extent, informed by radical politics, something of a turn-off to establishment publishing unless it is made to seem a form of fashion or incarnated as wishy-washy liberal cant, the book could be marketed in a number of ways that would not appear in the least transgressive. Indeed, on one level The Song of Synth might well be perceived as a science fiction novel that explores a personal odyssey through the process of detox and rehab, a kind of Pilgrim's Progress for the narcotized. Lucius Shepard, from his Introduction Doubinsky owes something to Burroughs not only in the sly ironies and anarchies of his style but in the mix of highly analytical intelligence and unrestrained imagination he brings to his work. Like Burroughs, he s a cold-blooded satirist with the sensibility of a poet. The other writer whose influence looms large in this book is Michael Moorcock; not only is Absinth dedicated to him, and its episodic, non-linear structure in part an homage to such Moorcock novels as The Condition of Muzak and Mother London, but a certain famous or infamous creation of Moorcock s even drops in from the Multiverse to say hello, looking none the worse for wear. As well, you ll meet Iris, a fortune-teller able to see not the future but weirdly anachronistic versions of the past. Sid Saperstein, a shameless huckster chosen to publish a sacred manuscript whose message will shake heaven and earth alike. Hermes, the Greek messenger god, dispatched by Zeus to sound out his fellow deities, still smarting from the licking they took two thousand years ago, on how best to take advantage of the coming changes, whatever they may be. And God Himself, whose enigmatic voice addresses us throughout the novel in the contemporary koans of advertising lingo. Paul Witcover, from his introduction

Edition details

• Publisher: PS Publishing
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1848634552
• ISBN 13: 9781848634558
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 383