The Disposable Soma (2023) - The year is 2164 and politics has become unrecognizable. Democrats have become conservative, Republicans have become liberal, and an upstart party called the Empathy Party blames all the world's ills on sociopaths. An assassination leaves the Empathy Party's candidacy wide open and a clown car of candidates vies for the nomination. One, hotel heir and failed comedian Jim Liu, stands out from the others when he chooses a genetically modified, super-intelligent, opium-addicted parrot as his running mate. This book follows his quest to become the Empathy Party's nominee for the 2164 presidential election. His campaign takes him through an America where most days are public holidays, psychedelic drug use is widespread, and the last uncontacted people on Earth are the unknowing subjects of a reality show whose fans have tuned it into a new religion. Be aware that this is a disturbing book. It is not written for children.
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Planet of the Head-Breakers (2023) - Centuries after the revolution, the remnants of humanity survive on agricultural communes where they are subjected to mandatory lobotomies before reaching adulthood. The centuries-old, malfunctioning robots that control them have turned the lobotomy into a coming-of-age ceremony. Most children look forward to it, but not Jim. He dreads the impending surgery and contrives a plan to evade it. Japeth, a nomadic surgical robot tasked with performing the lobotomies, admires Jim's rebellious spirit and decides to spare him. He promises to return, and makes a bold claim - he was once a man of flesh and blood. Jim maintains the charade of being lobotomized as he awaits Japeth's promised return, but after years without rescue, he resolves to flee the commune. His quest takes him across a barren, post-apocalyptic landscape in a desperate search for the elusive Japeth.
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Cousin Calls (2021) - A college student reluctantly attends a family chili cookout that turns into a never ending nightmare. A man desperate for job skills uses a brain implant to help him learn, but it malfunctions and leaves him sexually attracted to shadows. A private investigator is hired to discover who keeps befouling the walls of convenience store bathrooms. Two deer engaged in combat find that they are unable to unlock from one another’s antlers after the fight is over. A single mother spends 2020 battling an evil landlord, a fascist neighbor, national political chaos, and a global pandemic. These are the strange stories told by regulars at the local bar on Christmas Eve, stories which each began with a phone call from someone who announced “you don’t know me, but we’re cousins.”
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The Last Feast (2018) - Jim, the only human still alive in the universe, lives his life on a small escape pod orbiting a black hole, where he survives by replicating himself and eating his clones. Before eating one of his duplicates, he entertains his meal by recounting the story of how he got here and how he managed to survive. It began when he had decided to travel to an interstellar colony where he could sell some museum pieces he owned. En route, the ship he is on gets momentarily caught in the powerful gravity of a black hole and is flung trillions and trillions of years into the future. The passengers find themselves in a time of maximum entropy, where all life is extinct, all the stars have burned out, and there is nothing left in the universe except a black hole and a complete vacuum extending in all directions. As the original crew of seven is slowly reduced through suicide, murder, and accident, two factions form. One group believes, against all evidence, that somehow, somewhere, there exists intelligent life in this universe that can rescue them from this hell, and they devote their energies to sending out more and more powerful distress calls. The other group simply wants to preserve the ship's power, so that they can live comfortably in this hopeless universe as long as possible.
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The Usurper King (2017) takes place in an alternate universe where the serial killer Ted Bundy was never apprehended and is now running for president in 2016. Jim, a sufferer of a hybrid computer-biological virus that causes premature aging, tries to pay for his treatments by winning money on the game show 'Guts!', which has contestants competitively predict the future by reading animal entrails. As Jim begins to find omens in the entrails of Bundy's victory, and details of Bundy's murderous past are uncovered, Jim and another contestant take it upon themselves to stop his ascent to power before it's too late.
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The
Orphans (2013) is a science fiction novel in which Jim, a washed up private
detective who suffers from bizarre neurological symptoms, is hired by an
anonymous client to locate seven orphans, the only survivors of a mass
suicide thirty years ago. The novel is set on Mars, a planet of war
refugees, organized crime, drug addicts, and The Church of Great Bliss –
a “neurotheistic” religion which practices the post-mortem fusing and
disembodied resurrection of the brains of deceased members, resulting in
an afterlife of unified consciousness. As Jim stumbles upon more facts
about the case, he uncovers a conspiracy implicating some of the most
powerful individuals on Mars.
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Planet of the Head-Breakers (2023) - Centuries after the revolution, the remnants of humanity survive on agricultural communes where they are subjected to mandatory lobotomies before reaching adulthood. The centuries-old, malfunctioning robots that control them have turned the lobotomy into a coming-of-age ceremony. Most children look forward to it, but not Jim. He dreads the impending surgery and contrives a plan to evade it. Japeth, a nomadic surgical robot tasked with performing the lobotomies, admires Jim's rebellious spirit and decides to spare him. He promises to return, and makes a bold claim - he was once a man of flesh and blood. Jim maintains the charade of being lobotomized as he awaits Japeth's promised return, but after years without rescue, he resolves to flee the commune. His quest takes him across a barren, post-apocalyptic landscape in a desperate search for the elusive Japeth.
Cousin Calls (2021) - A college student reluctantly attends a family chili cookout that turns into a never ending nightmare. A man desperate for job skills uses a brain implant to help him learn, but it malfunctions and leaves him sexually attracted to shadows. A private investigator is hired to discover who keeps befouling the walls of convenience store bathrooms. Two deer engaged in combat find that they are unable to unlock from one another’s antlers after the fight is over. A single mother spends 2020 battling an evil landlord, a fascist neighbor, national political chaos, and a global pandemic. These are the strange stories told by regulars at the local bar on Christmas Eve, stories which each began with a phone call from someone who announced “you don’t know me, but we’re cousins.”
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