THE BOOKS
ABOUT THE BOOKS
On November 4 1953, Theodore F. Schism climbs into his mother’s defrosting refrigerator and shuts the door. He is 9 years old.
On December 1 1968, five young people sit at a table watching the very first Vietnam draft lottery. Actually there are six, counting Isabel Schism’s unborn daughter Snap. Sitting next to them, Leif Lambrochet has a plan with the virtues of being simple and straightforward. Also at the table, Leif’s sister Clare is waiting with an unearned placidity to find out what she wants out of life. Roberto “Robot” Larch is waiting with a more dangerous ennui for his draft number; and next month John Knot—eventually to become Jay Null, yes that one, author of The Book of Data—will begin to change the world.
Meanwhile, Theo Schism has a lot of time in the refrigerator, or maybe not so much. He can, for example, review his life-to-date, and a lot can happen in nine years. But about what’s going on outside (good luck, Mom and Dad)? Eventually, though, comes a visitation of sorts, with a hint of avatar and a whiff of doppelganger, and after that things get crowded.
On the other hand, if he got himself in here, why can’t he get himself out?
There is Nam. And L.A. And the transportation system of Perth, and a midnight bridge in Edmonton. As crucibles go, take your pick.
In your hands you hold the first of three books in which these and other human beings live out their lives in the midst of whatever it was that happened in the U.S.A. from that time to this. Their stories turn out to be very American: i.e., you would not believe them if I told you.
But this way, you’re in at the start. You have a fighting chance.
READ AN EXCERPT ORDER A COPY NOW!
There was simply too much (definite oxymoron!) to deal with: the inevitable fate of anyone who dared confront “everything.” In August 1990, Henderson still imagined briny coils, a smothering octopod threatening to reach Critical Mass and explode black slime all over R&D.
And yet he could not help himself. On the last of several sleepless nights, sitting in a luxuriously appointed bathroom of a high-end East Bay condominium in order to avoid disturbing the sleeping woman in the bedroom outside, he doodled on the next available page of a spiral notebook.
He didn’t like clutter in his head. He called his head, at least, his own. Also, his preference was to decide in advance how to react to things before it was necessary to react.
In other words, he tried to avoid situations where off-the-cuff responses were expected. He did not think well in those situations. He disliked being forced into hasty decisions.
He studied what he’d done. On the notebook page he’d sketched a festival of tinker toys, a spaghetti factory, a maze of lines crossing hither and yon, among and between a shanty town of squares, rectangles, trapezoids, diamonds, circles, ovals, barrels and cones representing a “thirty thousand foot” overview: input, throughput, output; decision points: transformations, conversions, formulae; and data stores: files, tables, archives, tapes, rules, and dictionaries: a corporate “flow chart.”
His first thought was:
More was not needed. The answer was Less …
READ AN EXCERPT ORDER A COPY NOW!
Snap Weaver wakes up early and we mean early—the red numbers on the bedside clock read 4:59 AM—and all the worse because she’d climbed into the king-sized bed at 4:45.
In the last fourteen minutes she’s plunged into a lack of consciousness so profound that when she wakes up she’s completely disoriented. In an instant, the very idea of sleep drains away.
Psychologists call it “the armpit of the night:” the unfettered horror of just before dawn, when unbidden thought elbows like a dire clown into the passive and helpless brain:
Uncle Fuck.
Eight months later, it’s no easier to process. The numb disbelief is still there, the fact like a wedged-in splinter; terror from unexpected angles, despair like a black lake behind.
Amerigo Vespucci turns back from the ocean blue, spooked by a bloated whale:
Uncle Fuck.
George Washington’s fire goes out at Valley Forge:
Uncle Fuck.
J.W. Booth’s bullet deep into Abraham Lincoln’s brain:
Uncle John Fuck—exceeding his ration of El León, arms folded, chin up, eyes squeezed to slits in his pink face.
Small comfort that she knows (from long and exhausting experience) that the hours must eventually pass.
Because after that? No end is conceivable.
And, worse, no reversal—ever—after that.
The house is silent around her. It’s a fight to the death, her exhausted brain vs. Uncle Fuck, for her brain is all she has left.
