Say you're the Savior, Fred Christ. Would you want your frozen head to be reaninmated in 1984? The world is going all to hell. War looms. Earthquakes happen with increasing regularity; weather patterns are awry; birds are in the water, fish in the air. Old ways wither; old languages are lost as the memories of their last surviving speakers disolve like cobwebs. Something rotten this way comes. Governments collapse around the globe, leaving only The Party to rule over all. In a prison cell, a madman spins theories of the mind, conjuring his own freedom. In cars and bars and shopping malls, proles obediently obey the jaded dictates of Big Brother, Ronald Reagan and Oliver North that emanate from the irony machine they call the telescreen. In a subzero laboratory, a scientist stares at an imprisoned god. And in a lonely bare room in a vast and nearly empty monastery, a young novice studies and prays and contemplates the idea of simple goodness, trying to comprehend chaos. For which his only reward will be the pure torment of The Pains. In a world that's part Orwell, part Cheney, and part who knows what, a holy man tries to find a way to give meaning to his suffering, and perhaps thereby save us all. With The Pains, John Damien Sundman, an eigenvector of the author of Acts of the Apostles the editor of Cheap Complex Devices, has created his most disturbing, and most hopeful vision yet. Cheeseburger Brown, the creator of Simon of Space brings this universe to life with twelve vivid illustrations. In a deranged world, what will save us: science or faith? Open your mind, and Fred willing, you will find release from your own pains within these pages.
John (F.X, Compton, Damien) Sundman grew up on a small farm in New Jersey, attended Xavier (Jesuit, military) High School on 16th Street Manhattan, got a degree in anthropology from Hamilton College, did a two year rural development stint in Peace Corps, then: Purdue grad school agricultural economics, 25 years or so high tech hardware software Boston area & Silicon Valley, drop out Martha's Vineyard, truck driver, warehouseman, construction worker, working class hero, poverty & embarrassment. Wrote technoparanoid novel, metafictiony geekoid novella, dystopian illustrated phantasmagoria; back in and out of high tech; firefighter; husband, father of 3, essayist for Salon.com; food pantry worker.
My website is http://www.wetmachine.com
