Midnight's Simulacra

Front and back covers, and spine

My first novel, coming 2024-01-11!

• A currentish draft of Part I is available, containing the first four chapters

It's a romp featuring plenty of hacking, clandestine chemistry, and even a spot of at-home uranium enrichment. Along the way, there's lots of science and philosophy of science, and some big questions. A partial bibliography is available at https://midnightssimulacra.com.

Blurb

The twenty-first century's primary path of socioeconomic mobility is engineering; scientists took over from the priests no later than the twentieth. America's most ambitious students these days compete for placement in STEM programs, as do some of her wiliest rogues.

Michael Luis Bolaño is the scion of Mexican oil wealth gone to rut in Texas. Sherman Spartacus Katz is the hyperliterate son of evangelical eccentrics from the North Georgia mountains. One hopes to restore what's been lost, the other to attain what never was. Together at an elite Institute of Technology they train as engineers. Together in the dark they study forbidden teachings. By graduation, they're formidably competent, audacious to a fault, and wholly ungovernable.

midnight's simulacra is a hysterical, scientifically rigorous, and fastpaced thriller, a modern picaresque, a portrait of the autist as a young man, and unlike any other novel you've read.

Formats

• Hardback ($40): the intended format. 9x6"
• Trade ($20): also good. Exact same text/paging as hardback. 8.5x5.5"
• PDF ($0): free. No cover. Not the best format for some ereaders. 9.25x6.125"
  • Should you like the book, it would be cool if you bought a copy, or at least spread the word.
• EPUB ($20): least faithful version, but most flexible on ereaders

In the future, I might release an annotated edition. This would likely only be available in hardback, but who knows? I might annotate all formats simply to cut down on annoyances. The likelihood of me doing this is directly related to reader response as seen in sales and reviews.

Contents

Part I

1. coming of age in confusion
2. sherman katz gets himself expelled
3. michael bolaño indulges in small pleasures
4. elephant seals

Part II

5. devesh choudhary is all about physics and rolls
6. atrium vestae
7. y’all’ve any more of that vee-cee?
8. alexei orshanskiy thinks he can get you lemons
9. pavlov’s hierophant and schrödinger’s hæresiarch
10. vladimir cel tredat takes up a collection
11. ergot
12. welcome to my lab; we’ve got Taq polymerase

Part III

13. cloud wandered lonely like a daffodil
14. max-cashflow min-cut theorem
15. if you eat that i think it is going to kill you
16. erica marelli grows tired of bivalves
17. anarbek tursyn busts a move
18. the chemical history of an eightball
19. uranium

Part IV

20. greg moyer receives some bad advice
21. a stamped-in network of paths
22. overall there is a smell of fried onions
23. vancouver! vancouver! this is it! (necroplanetology)
24. it’ll really raise the tone of your trap
25. oriana marino speaks in riddles
26. feedback loops are Bad Shit, to be Avoided
27. my mistakes are many, but less terrible than god’s

Part V

28. usurper
29. prima luce

Illustrations

fullpage black and white illustrations by Justin Barker

not all of these ended up being used.

warning: these arguably contain spoilers

• 

  jenseits von gut und böse (beyond good and evil)

• 

  mémoires d’outre-tombe (memoirs from beyond the grave)

• 

  the thirst for annihilation

• 

  the age of innocence

• 

  without MSG i am nothing

• 

  the yellow wallpaper

• 

  unfair arguments with existence

• 

  le rouge et le noir (the red and the black)

• 

  fanged noumena

• 

  their eyes were watching god

• 

  le sens du combat (the art of struggle)

• 

  el jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (the garden of forking paths)

• 

  to the lighthouse

• 

  war in the age of intelligent machines

• 

  auch zwerge haben klein angefangen (even dwarfs started small)

• 

  angle of repose

• 

  le dieu du carnage (god of carnage)

• 

  a mathematical theory of communication

• 

  the difference between me and you is that i am not on fire