Check out my first novel, midnight's simulacra!
Midnight's Simulacra
My first novel, coming 2024-01-09!
- 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
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 a major Technical Institute they are trained as engineers; together in the dark they study forbidden teachings. By graduation, they're formidably competent, and wholly rogue.
Michael hopes to unwind an operation grown too large for comfort, but not until they've finally cleaned their money and moved it into the banking system. Sherman stays awake for days on meth, building baroque machines, designing powerful drug analogues, and chasing scientific glory. The DEA and FBI circle, aware that there's something rotten in Atlanta. A bulk LSD sale goes sideways, but opens new opportunities of an entirely different nature. Carried away by events increasingly beyond their control, the two find themselves targets of governments, industry, and old friends unable to resist the allure of incredible power.
They meanwhile talk ceaseless smack, seek out spergy love, deal with sadistic professors, supercharge wheelchairs, hack compulsively, and avoid a possibly demoniacal snapping turtle. Midnight's Simulacra is a picaresque technical thriller.
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
- Available for preorder on Amazon, shipping 2024-01-23
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
- coming of age in confusion
- sherman katz gets himself expelled
- michael bolaño indulges in small pleasures
- elephant seals
- devesh choudhary is all about physics and rolls
- atrium vestae
- y’all’ve any more of that vee-cee?
- pavlov’s hierophant and schrödinger’s hæresiarch
- alexei orshanskiy thinks he can get you lemons
- ergot
- vladimir cel tredat takes up a collection
- welcome to my lab; we’ve got Taq polymerase
- cloud wandered lonely like a daffodil
- max-cashflow min-cut theorem
- if you eat that i think it is going to kill you
- misadventures in regulated capitalism
- erica marelli knows her yeast
- uranium
- anarbek tursyn busts a move
- the chemical history of an eightball
- a stamped-in network of paths
- overall there is a smell of fried onions
- greg moyer gives some bad advice
- vancouver! vancouver! this is it! (necroplanetology)
- the one about narcosubs
- the south’s got something to say
- it’ll really raise the tone of your trap
- feedback loops are Bad Shit, to be Avoided
- oriana marino speaks in riddles
- my mistakes are many, but less terrible than god’s
- usurper
- prima luce
Illustrations
fullpage black and white illustrations by Justin Barker
not all of these ended up being used.
warning: these arguably contain spoilers
-
cien años de soledad (one hundred years of solitude)
-
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
-
a clockwork orange
-
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
-
unfair arguments with existence
-
auch zwerge haben klein angefangen (even dwarfs started small)
-
angle of repose
-
le plaisir du texte (the pleasure of the text)
-
leviathan
-
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
Dramatis Personae
warning: these arguably contain spoilers
Major characters are introduced in prime-numbered chapters. Originally, I was going to do something inspired by serialist music, and identify each character with a prime number, and then only have characters in a given chapter if they were in that chapter number's prime factorization. This idea sucked for several reasons, so I abandoned it.
- Sherman Spartacus Katz (b. 1980)
- Also mother Eveline (Evy), and her husband Cassius James. Also Theodore Roosevelt and Jodie Foster, agents of an undetermined agency in a series of recurring dreams.
- Enters GT 1998 CS+MATH BS, graduates 2005
- Michael Luis Bolaño (b. 1979)
- Also great-great-grandfather Gustavo, and his wife Guadalupe; their son Antonio, and his wife Valentina; their three children: eldest son José Luis, and the twin daughters Xevera and Zita; Lillian, wife of José Luis; their son Luis, and his wife Rosemary; their son Diego (brother of MLB).
- Enters GT 1998 IE+PHYS BS, graduates 2002
- Devesh Choudhary (b. 1977)
- Also a pursuing alligator snapping turtle.
- Enters GT 1997 PHYS BS, graduates 2003
- Enters GT 2008 PHYS PhD
- Alexei Orshanskiy (b. 1980)
- Enters GT 1999 CS+MechE BS, graduates 2003
- Enters GT 2003 MechE MS, graduates 2005
- Vladimir cel Tredat (b. 1982)
- Enters GT 2002 CS, graduates 2005
- Anarbek Tursyn (b. 1977)
- Enters MEPhI 1995 NucE BS, graduates 2000
- Enters GT 2009 NucE MS, graduates 2011
- Cloud (b. ?)
- Erica Marelli (b. 1985)
- Enters UC-Berkeley 2003 Chemistry BS, graduates 2006
- Enters GT 2006 Bioinformatics MS, graduates 2009
- Enters GT 2009 BME PhD, graduates 2013
- Greg Moyer (b. 1979)
- Enters GT 1998 MGMT BS, graduates 2003
- Oriana Marino (b. 1988)
- Enters GSU 2007 Phil+Journalism BS, graduates 2012
