Ecstacy Club: A Novel (Paperback)

by Douglas Rushkoff (Author) "The space looked huge the first time we saw it..." (more)
Key Phrases: ecstasy club, candy flip, mind gym, Ecstasy Club, Phylogenic Foresight, Rolling Stone (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The end of the millennium is just a couple of years away, and folks, it's getting squirrelly out there. Survivalists are stockpiling weapons in the hills as they wait for black helicopters and a new world order; Heaven's Gate cultists returned to the mother ship via poison-laced applesauce while members of the Solar Temple believed their suicides on earth would result in a better life on the planet Sirius. Can it get any stranger? In Douglas Rushkoff's novel, Ecstasy Club, it can and does. Rushkoff's club is an abandoned piano factory in Oakland, California, where members of a small group of idealists hold round-the-clock raves even as they seek to combine computer technology, mind-altering substances, and New Age spirituality to create a method of time travel.

Along with end-of-the-world scenarios, the millennium brings with it a heavy dose of conspiracy theory, and Ecstasy Club has its fair share. Once narrator Zach Levi and his merry band actually succeed in "breaking time" online, they are beset by menacing government agents, religious zealots, and a host of other special interest groups who are out to shut them down. So while we're all waiting for 1999, what better way to pass the time than with Douglas Rushkoff's Ecstasy Club? --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews
Rushkoff, author of such books on the emerging cyberculture as Playing the Future (1996), etc., applies his Faith Popcornlike sense of the zeitgeist to his first fiction: a high-tech conspiracy tale that ends up as a conventional melodrama despite its next-wave flair. In an abandoned factory in Oakland, a group of drug-munching techno-nerds and cyber-geeks, along with a guru wannabe, set up their experiment in communal living: a huge, fully wired environment for moneymaking parties and performances. With their virtual reality toys and visionquest drugs, the motley group of eight or so full-time residents hope to discover a higher level of consciousness and evolve as a select group of psychic travelers. Duncan, the leader of the rave cult, is a master of situational psychology, capable of bending his minions to his will--except for the narrator. Zack Levi, an Ivy League grad, seems to know that he's just slumming on his way to becoming a suburban shrink. Zack, after all, recognizes the cultic dimensions of the group's experiment as some sort of Zen nazism, a yin-yang adventure in tribe-think. Lauren, Duncan's lover, is also Zack's true love, despite his cohabitation with a hippie chick named Kirsten. When things go haywire, Lauren helps Zack pull out and retreat to domestic bliss in Ohio. Along the way, Duncan focuses his paranoia on one E.T. Harmon, the leader of Cosmotology, a kind of cross between L. Ron Hubbard and Bill Gates. And, like many paranoids, Duncan has real enemies: All the troubles that befall the naive space-trippers are in fact engineered by a grand conspiracy involving Cosmotology, the government, and some characters who resemble such famed space cadets as Timothy Leary and John Lilly. Full of the buzzwords valued by advertisers and marketers, this hyped-up fiction proudly proclaims: ``This demographic belongs to us.'' Enough cyberpop sociology to keep the Internet chatting; others will log off. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; lst Riverhead trade pbk. ed edition (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573227021
• ISBN-13: 978-1573227025
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #203,853 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply an excellent read, March 12, 2000

By A Customer

Well, you have to notice that people either love or hate this book. That means it generated a strong emotional response either way, which for an author, is always a goal. I simply loved it. If you read through expecting all of it to be realistic, you'll be disappointed. If you read through expecting a wild romp with some unforgettable scenes describing the philosophy of the 90's "rave culture" - you'll enjoy yourself quite a bit. Keep in mind that the book is narrated from a perspective of a person who is rather heavily drugged most of the time - I think the people who state that it is not 'believable' are missing the point completely. This book was a page turner that kept me up all night until I read it, start to finish. Simply an incredible piece of work, and I would urge any open minded people to give it a chance. The writing style is crisp and easy to follow, making it an even more enjoyable read. One of the best books I've picked up in weeks. Five stars, all the way.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A dense bundle of millennial memes!, June 24, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Ecstasy Club: A Novel (Hardcover)

Have you ever looked at how the events in your life are unfolding and discovered in yourself the unshakable conviction that there are no coincidences? After reading "Ecstasy Club," you may look back on your discovery of the book as an integral element in a larger pattern; a pattern so seamless that you cannot see it as just an orderless juxtaposition of "random events."

Rushkoff uses this tale of cyber-savvy twenty-somethings who commandeer an abandoned piano factory and turn it into a wired commune and rave cult headquarters as a vehicle for infecting the reader with a virulent set of consciousness-transforming memes. It's okay if you don't know what a meme is. You'll have an intuitive understanding after you've read "Ecstasy Club."

Rushkoff doesn't stop to explain memes, the significance of novelty, Ericksonian hypnosis, the attractor at the end of time, or really much of anything. If you're already familiar with these concepts, you'll get a warm self-satisfied glow as you think, "Nobody's going to get all these references." If you're encountering these concepts for the first time as you read "Ecstasy Club" you'll experience the electrifying thrill of discovering that the world is a far stranger and more wonderful place than you'd previously realized, and you'll think "Wow!"

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sex, Drugs and Social Reprogramming, March 19, 2002

By	Shane Tiernan (St. Petersburg, FL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ecstasy Club: A Novel (Hardcover)

I haven't read anything else by Rushkoff but I have to say that I enjoyed this book immensely. What you get for your [money] is: Insight into the rave (and other) subculture(s); conspiracy theories (from the Philadelphia Experiment to a not so subtlely masked version of the scientologists); a full education pertaining to the effects of experimental, mind-effecting drugs; graphic depictions of group sex; an introduction to social programming and its effects; and a glimpse into the idea of consciousness evolution. This is like Robert Anton Wilson's _Prometheus Rising_ written as fiction.

If the concepts are new to you, you may be left behind (or may be forced to reread) but I don't think this stuff is too far out of anyone's grasp. Just remember that all of this stuff isn't fiction. Many people believe in some of these concepts and live these types of lifestyles, it's just that most people aren't aware they exist. My favorite line in the book is, "... the kind of thing that everyone talks about doing when they're in college, but then never does because they get swept away in the current of real life's events." (That's paraphrased a bit) Been there, done that?