Welcome to the Arms Race
No longer available.
Welcome to the Arms Race
by Justin Isis
Publication Date: 16th December, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-907681-26-4
Paperback, 358 pages, 8.0 x 5.25 x 0.8 inches
The long-awaited second collection from Justin Isis takes us on a sharp turn away from the ‘Huysmans in Tokyo’ feel of the first collection and into a world of near and far future shocks. Torrents of alien language and remixed fragments of science fiction hauntology merge in the valley of the shadow of unguessable metaphysics, while atomized characters scramble for self and meaning only to find themselves overwritten or revised out of reality.
Churches made of meat, spaceships powered by song, simulated authors and a soul-warping artwork that may or may not exist — in these ten stories you will be confronted with a garish neon blueprint of post-humanity, a form-fixated vision of the Altermodern less New Wave than No Wave. Welcome to tomorrow. Welcome to the Arms Race.
Contents
1 Welcome to the Arms Race
2 Some Notes on the Artwork of Chris Wilhelm
3 M-FUNK VA THA FUTUREGIONS OF INVERSE FUNKATIVITY
4 The Stars and Yellow Doubt
5 The Heart of a Man
6 Brent Beckford vs Writing
7 The Portrayed Man
8 The Plot
9 The Willow
10 Defense/Prosecution
What People Say about Welcome to the Arms Race:
“Welcome to the Arms Race is on my list of futures books that belong to the present, and push fiction ahead like Boeing exhaust vaporising over Heathrow.”
Jeremy Reed, poet and novelist
“In Welcome to the Arms Race, Justin Isis, as usual, dazzles with his rendition of shattered reality where deeply damaged characters kick up their heels as they revel in their self-inflicted agonies. There’s just no letting up—from depravity involving a squid to the relentless mirroring of our deep-seated anxieties in ‘The Heart of a Man,’ from cosmic horror in ‘The Willow’ to the tortuous psychedelia in ‘M-FUNK VS THA FUTUREGIONS OF INVERSE FUNKATIVITY.’ Another terrific collection of stories from Chômu Press.”
Kristine Ong Muslim, author of We Bury the Landscape
What People Say about I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like:
“I love these stories for their fractionally off-world message that is always vitally, sexily modern.”
Jeremy Reed, poet and novelist
What They Say Generally:
“Justin Isis is a genius and an inspiration. I’ve said so before; and I’ll say it again.”
Mark Samuels, author of Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes
Related links