In this futuristic comic-noir adventure-romance, General Von Steuben and iDex, the vast cloning empire with its dreaded Aught Division, are hell-bent to eradicate the Zero and thereby destroy whatever's left of humanity's dimensional stability. Only Max, a love-sumped, aging P.I., armed with just his two bare hands, "a small boy's notion of doing good," and a pack of smokes, stands between us and their nefarious intention. What unfolds: a blistering riot of tropes strung across a plot replete with a car chase, torture sequence, escape, quest and discovery, an outrageous imperative, a drowning, and even a cliff hanger with lightning and an exploding head. Will Max be able to save his two loves, Maxine and Dolly, from what appear to be horrendous fates? Can Max plant his charge before the idiot-savants at iDex have their way with the Universe? Perhaps. But few things seem less likely.
Praise for Skip Fox and wired to zone
Our hippest phenomenologist, Swiftian, ontologist of frass, Sadean, high priest of proctological slapstick, sorrowful, terribly funny, a celebrant of Eros, the enemy of oblivion and diminishing returns—Skip Fox is of the tribe of Cronenberg, Lautreamont, Jodorowsky, Hunter S. Thompson; he is the Keeper of Poe's raven and he is a master. wired to zone is unique in the history of the novel.
—Rikki Ducornet
With wired to zone Skip Fox has crossed tech-noir with bio-punk to create something maddened and strange and utterly new, a kind of blue acid noir licking the flaps of its own pockets and not to be denied. A gorgeous and lurching dizziness of a novel.
—Brian Evenson
Welcome to the nuance parade of corporate genetic leftovers where "freaked and fractured thinking" reigns supreme. With "a pathos past all measure" amusing the muses is as primary to Skip Fox as smoking or breathing. Inside his "chemical stew" we're always almost nearly there and he arrives just in time, lurking at the threshold, leading us while being led.
—Micah Ballard
Praise writing that tends exuberantly to its composition, enriched by long study and practice, language all generative actuality; characters that exist through act, rather than to represent actors; story not as plot but match with the Deep Blue of fatal logic; a hero stretched from Apuleius to Chandler, as well as two distressed demoiselles: one reincarnates Phoebe Zeitgeist, the other blends Cloned Dolly and Marilyn Monroe. Somebody is threatening zero, nothing, loss of neutrality, the ultimate MacGuffin. Passion of the digital. Them versus whatever we think we are. Praise this book by reading it. You will find it novel.
—Brian Richards
Skip Fox's first novel, wired to zone, succeeds several volumes of poetry, most recently Sheer Indefinite: Selected Poems, 1991-2011 (Univ. of New Orleans Press), and Delta Blues (Ahadada Books), For To (Blazevox), What Of (Potes & Poets) and Adventures of Max and Maxine (Auguste). His work is included in Another South: Experimental Writing in the South (U of Alabama). He has been published by such little magazines as Hambone, o.blek, Talisman, Exquisite Corpse, and YAWP: a Journal of Poetry & Art. He (as Willard Fox) has also published a secondary bibliography: Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, and Robert Duncan: A Reference Guide (G. K. Hall, 1989), which was the culmination of six years' work. He received his Ph.D. from Bowling Green in 1981 and began teaching poetry at The University of Louisiana in Lafayette, LA.
