Cyclonopedia

[IdleRich]

Well, I didn't start on Sunday as promised but finally opened it yesterday and I'm only a few pages in but I thought I'd start a thread to see if anyone has any thoughts. The first things that sprang to my mind so far: Blobjectivity - that's a joke right? All this stuff about the significance of the various numbers on the joints of the cross - that's a joke right?
Also, this bit stuck out:

"Is Reza male or female? At first I thought female, but now I would like to believe that RN was male."

Kind of links quite nicely with some of the comments in the other thread:

Mistersloane:

Damn. I badly want her to be a her and not him to be a him, can't they trans or something?

Sub-Rosa:

When I first encountered Reza I thought he was female, but now know he is male

 

[vimothy]

All this stuff about the significance of the various numbers on the joints of the cross - that's a joke right?

When Reza was writing for Hyperstition, they were always into this weird, hard to understand, ultra-idiosyncratic type of Qabalah (e.g. this or possibly this for an 'explanation').

 

[IdleRich]

"When Reza was writing for Hyperstition, they were always into this weird, hard to understand, ultra-idiosyncratic type of Qabalah (e.g. this or possibly this for an 'explanation')."

Blocked at work unfortunately but will check later. The bits I'm talking about however seem to make no sense whatsoever, or at least, no sense in the way that anyone else could independently take the same things and come to the same conclusion, all you can do is take it as read and go with the flow. Or maybe I'm stupid.

 

[IdleRich]

"The bits I'm talking about however seem to make no sense whatsoever, or at least, no sense in the way that anyone else could independently take the same things and come to the same conclusion, all you can do is take it as read and go with the flow. Or maybe I'm stupid."

Maybe a good analogy would be hearing someone playing that Mornington Crescent game.

 

[mistersloane]

Kind of links quite nicely with some of the comments in the other thread:

Mistersloane:

Sub-Rosa:

Hah that's weird and nicely coincidental. Mine not here yet - I have to redirect my post to another address - but will pick it up after the weekend. It sounds totally fucked up, which is good for me at the moment.

 

[IdleRich]

"Hah that's weird and nicely coincidental"

My first thought was that you had already read it and you were sneakily making an in-joke that we couldn't get until later.

 

[mistersloane]

haha no! I'm not that clever or machiavellian unfortunately. Not read it yet! but usually if people talk about marks and crosses they're referencing Rosicruscianism (sp?) and that but I'll shut up until it's in my hands.

 

[IdleRich]

"Not read it yet! but usually if people talk about marks and crosses they're referencing Rosicruscianism (sp?) and that"

Not this time - that would be much too simple, this is the Cross of Akht we're talking about here.

 

[jenks]

Started it last night and really couldn't get a handle on it. Like reading while drunk or something.

Read the first bit and started the stuff on the crosses - will go back and start again tonight - maybe i just wasn't in the right mood.

 

[IdleRich]

"Started it last night and really couldn't get a handle on it. Like reading while drunk or something.
Read the first bit and started the stuff on the crosses - will go back and start again tonight - maybe i just wasn't in the right mood."

Well, the first bit wasn't too bad (I thought) - just a very fast-paced quick cutting diary thing that concentrated only on the salient points of the story and the incidentals(?) such as her DFA 1979 t-shirt. Already introduced RN as a character - no messing about there - but otherwise fairly normal. The next bit was a whole lot more complicated though, some of it I had to read several times, more comments when I have had time to read a bit more.

 

[sub-rosa]

I got my copy and have been reading I’m on the fourth chapter (?) Relic. I am familiar with Reza’s works from Collapse and hyperstition and I’ve been going with the flow I guess and am finding the chapters are becoming easier to follow (no numbers stuff after the first chapter and chapters are easier to grasp. I do think that some of the concepts (hyperstitions of oil, blobjectivity, trison and black sun) in the first chapter are important as they keep surfacing in the next chapters.

Blobjective: LOL, world as seen from the subterranean perspective of the blob (petroleum) ?!!!

 

[Mr. Tea]

Just put my order in, should have it by Tuesday. Looking forward to this hugely!

 

[mistersloane]

Just came through today. I've got a twisted neck from my gig last week and horrible flu so dosed up to the eyeballs and it's just perfect reading, like Ishmael Reed if he'd been listening to Black Secret Technology instead of Ornette Coleman. Lovely. I do keep passing out reading it though, I hope that's the book rather than the codeine.

 

[Agent]

I used to read Reza's wok on Hyperstition - i always liked the way he brought deleuzian analysis to bear on middle east studies, especially nomadology. deleuzes best work was in collaboration with felix guatarri imo. not sure where Reza teaches but when i was on contact (maybe 3-4 years ago) he was working on his third PhD. A similar book, without any poststructualist theory, came out a couple years ago called Move Under Ground. I could never get into the Cthulhu cult on hyperstition but there's a lot of decent material in the archives.

 

[jenks]

I have been deep into the Sebag Montefiore biog of Stalin - a 700+ page brute. Cylclonopedia is next up.

Could I ask quite why everyone on here is so exited about this book - it's generated more buzz than any other book club read offered so far.

 

[mistersloane]

I have been deep into the Sebag Montefiore biog of Stalin - a 700+ page brute. Cylclonopedia is next up.

Could I ask quite why everyone on here is so exited about this book - it's generated more buzz than any other book club read offered so far.

I was really excited about it cos I read some of R.N's work in the Collapse journals and just thought it was the most far out shit I'd read in a long time, so was really excited to have a longer work to look through.

I'm enjoying it so far, quite alot actually, it feels very 21st century which is a nice feeling. It's nice to see theory and fiction kinda blended together; I have no idea of what is true and what isn't in the work and so reading it from that position puts you in sort of this dream state to begin with, which works. It conjures up that 'none of this is actually happening' kind of state of shock, very Interzone-y.

 

[IdleRich]

"Could I ask quite why everyone on here is so exited about this book - it's generated more buzz than any other book club read offered so far."

I think that the premise just sounded really interesting. Unfortunately I have had very little time to get going on it at all but I'm about sixty pages in I think.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Mine finally turned up today. And not a day too soon, I haven't had anything to read in weeks.

 

[vimothy]

I do want to read this -- but given the events of the last month or so, I want to read When Genius Failed first.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Heh, that was cool - I'd just read about the first two pages of the prologue when I changed trains at Mile End earlier, and noticed the guy in front of me was wearing a white tee-shirt with a design on the back taken from one of those ancient Assyrian cylinder seals found in Iraq. Just as well I'm not superstitious - or, indeed, hyperstitious.

Edit - the deity in the winged orb, from this seal: