Customer Reviews

Cyberculture Counterconspiracy: A Steamshovel Web Reader, Volume One

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Kenn Thomas, redoubtable and prolific writer-editor-publisher of Steamshovel Press and its associated Web site, has done us a tremendous favor. He has downloaded 175 pages of short articles from Steamshovel's web site into a remarkable book. Its best feature is that Kenn has been open to input and argument from many different sides of important questions and issues facing us. They include CIA-funded wars and conflicts, strife and murders, at home and abroad; the possibility of secret germ warfare having been conducted both abroad and here at home; "beatniks", UFO's, mind control; Iron Mountain, hoax or horror; Bill Clinton, Paula Jones, Cord and Mary Pinchot Meyer; Gloria Steinem's stints for the CIA; Gordon Liddy and Larry Flynt on the Gemstone File, and much more. The writers come from the Left, the Right, and the Middle; Democrats, Republicans, Reichians; theorists with varied slants on U.S political assassinations, and from many other points on the compass. They talk, discuss, argue with each other, reminiscent of town hall meetings, or what we used to be able to read in magazines featuring controversy before most of them were wiped out by the simple strategy of raising postal rates to brutal levels back in the '70's.

I am grateful for the opportunity to see these varied discussions in print, in one place, at one time, in paperback form. Crouched over a computer monitor, reading isolated articles appearing over several years' time, one would be hard put to be able to compare or coordinate several articles at once. The cast of characters appearing here are a sort of Vonnegut gonfalon of contemporary culture gathered under the banner of free inquiry; everyone is invited.

This book has been published by the new technology: text stored on a huge computer somewhere; copies printed on demand. It makes for flexible production, with no fear of cartons of unsold books getting dusty somewhere. On the negative side, no table of contents and no index means you are on your own when it comes to finding things.

Still, I highly recommend this book, both for the serious researcher into contemporary culture, and for the casual reader seeking to get his or her feet wet in waters far deeper than the "X-files."