vimothy

yurp
Hyperstition the Movie! I mean book!

Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials -- Reza Negarestani

Cyclonopedia is theoretical-fiction novel by Iranian philosopher and writer Reza Negarestani. Hailed by novelists, philosophers and cinematographers, Negarestani’s work is the first horror and science fiction book coming from and written on the Middle East.

'The Middle East is a sentient entity—it is alive!’ concludes renegade Iranian archaeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the ‘lubricant’ of historical and political narratives.
A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along.
Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil ...
At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, CYCLONOPEDIA is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archaeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.​
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Christ, it sounds like Dan Brown meets H. P. Lovecraft via Frederick Forsyth. :rolleyes:

Actually, it does sound quite cool. Should prolly be in Art, Literature and Film, though?
 

vimothy

yurp
Christ, it sounds like Dan Brown meets H. P. Lovecraft via Frederick Forsyth. :rolleyes:

I'm sure you'll like it if you're into dread soaked heavy critical theory disguised as sub-cyberpunk pulp fiction.

Actually, it does sound quite cool. Should prolly be in Art, Literature and Film, though?

Or Thought. Or Politics.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Is this out yet? I fucking love her writing, she's done a few essays for the Collapse journal that gek-opel put us onto and she's just a total mindfuck.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
That's bloody odd - I just did a google search and found Reza'a Facebook profile, which says "You must be friends with Reza to view her full profile", and has this photo on it:

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Then again, Iran *is* the world's sex-change capital... :rolleyes:

That's the Reza Thingumy who lives in Iran, there's another in Manchester, apparently.
 
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vimothy

yurp
I dunno -- I read Hyperstition for years and never got the impression that Reza is a woman. Plus, on the press release it says,

Negarestani’s preoccupations and matrix of socio-historical emergence have given him a unique perspective on the Middle East. His writings have gained wide recognition and gathered a cult following.
 

sub-rosa

cannibal horses
When I first encountered Reza I thought he was female, but now know he is male. The facebook Reza is not the writer Reza Negarestani plus the person in the photo is too business-like!!!

I googled Cyclonopedia and saw China Mieville mentioned in an interview that Cyclonopedia was his choice for favorite stylistically avant-garde book.
 
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