Eric is a relatively normal music-loving hipster. He works a day job in a record shop, he eats pizza almost everyday, and his only major quirk is that he hates computers. However, he soon discovers that he has an unusual talent and finds himself roped into a conspiracy that results in a fight for human freedom, and for reality itself.
“Could you break your
brain by thinking too much about the wrong things? I suppose so.”
Generally,
when I take a look at books, I try to keep my reviewer hat, which is
my penis, separate from my writer hat. The problem is, my writer hat
is also my penis, so this tends to cause a big overlap. I couldn't
help but notice there were a lot of theme overlaps with my own first
novel, The Story of the Y.
The main character is a record collection hipster, there are a lot of
ghosts and magic, there's a hatred and fear of authority running
throughout, and there's a lot of cosmic mystery. I bought this eight
years ago, but never got around to reading it until this year. I
can't help but feel like if I had read this right after I first
bought it, I would have either never written The Story of
the Y or it would have been a
much better novel. Either way, it's clear that Gulbranson and I are
functioning on a very similar wavelength.
The
title is both a reference to the famous quote from 1984,
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a
boot stamping on a human
face – forever,”
and to the computer language BASIC. It's not immediately
obvious what relevance it has, the story seems to just be about a
hipster who discovers he has psychic powers. However, when Gulbranson
drops the title in the book, it's certainly earned and doesn't feel
forced or cheesy at all.
One of my favorite parts of
this book is its sense of humor. I've laughed at few books harder.
The funniest chapter is when Eric comes home to his apartment to find
that someone has broken in. Nothing has been taken, but someone took
a shit on his kitchen floor. After cleaning up, he asks his landlord
about it who says he saw someone lurking around the building who
resembled “that person in the videos smashing the pumpkins.” When
Eric asks if he means Gallagher, the landlord clarifies that he meant
music videos. Eric takes this to mean either Billy Corrigan or
someone who resembles him is responsible.
It isn't a big surprise to
learn that original manuscript for this book was written for the
Three Day Novel contest, though it wasn't the winner for that year.
It moves along at a very fast pace and one could easily read this in
a day or so. I've heard this book considered bizarro, as it was
published through Legumeman Books. It could easily be filed under
Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, or Horror without seeming out of
place in the least, so bizarro seems as good a classification if any.
It has a unique voice written in a manner that feels as natural as
the way it mixes genre conventions.
This is an excellent book
and it's a shame that it's not only, but that used copies are so
difficult to find. The cheapest I could find were copies that are at
least $50. Not only that, but Gulbranson hasn't written anything
since this book, though he does have scattered stories in anthologies
and wrote two other novels before this that are even harder to find.
If you can find this book in a used book store, I highly recommend
picking this up and I hope this will find a reprinting eventually.
