nick black
nick black is an Atlanta based software writer, engineer and writer who in early 2024 published his first novel, midnight's simulacra, influenced by James Joyce's Ulysses and also Wilson and Shea's Illuminatus! I thought the book was good, also interesting and original, see my earlier review. As I mentioned in the review, readers familiar with Ulysses and Illuminatus! will notice many references in black's novel, and there are many other references and sources; I caught a reference to Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, for example.
As you can see from the interview, the protagonist of midnight's simulacra, Sherman Spartacus Katz, is largely based on black, just as Stephen Dedalus was a version of James Joyce.
I originally read midnight's simulacra as an ebook and then sent off for a paper copy; nick published it himself, although the publisher is listed as Gold & Appel Publishing. The book can be purchased directly from the official website in all of the usual formats (buying a paper copy from there gets you an autographed inscription) but you can also get it from Amazon. The paper copies are the preferred edition (they have illustrations, for example) but the ebook works fine and costs a manageable $9.
As you can see from his Goodreads postings, nick is a busy book consumer who reads widely, although his main interests appear to be heavy-duty modern fiction and technical works. At some point, I would like to catch up with him -- I haven't gotten around yet to reading Pynchon or David Foster Wallace or Cormac McCarthy. (Although nick reads quite a bit of science fiction, he generally does not hand out rave reviews for SF; hilariously, Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, gets just two stars and this review: "some good lines, an interesting idea or two, but most of this was just abjectly silly, and heinlein's crotchety old manism is hard to take." I find nick's reviews more useful than the ones from people who routinely pass out four and five stars). Aside from being busy with various software and engineering projects, Mr. black also is a book collector and information about his literary interests can be gleaned from his book collection documents; see this posting on Reddit and also this section of his official website.
By the way, "nick black" is the official spelling, and nick considers getting that name officially recognized as canon by the Microsoft Corporation as one of his best achievements, see below. He also has succeeded in getting another corporate behemoth, Amazon, to accept his spelling.
Hoping to learn more about nick and his book, I asked for an interview. I think this is one of the most interesting interviews I have ever published here.
RAWIllumination: Could you begin by telling us a little bit "about the author" and introduce yourself?
nick black: Katz is quite autobiographical. Born in Atlanta, GA 1980, the child of evangelical Pennsylvania transplants. My parents were more religious than most of our neighbors, but despised the whole Southern thing. We started Catholic, but ended up in a non-denominational evangelical parish with services eating five hours every Sunday. I was prohibited secular music, movies, or television, but books were open season, thank goodness. When it came time to pick colleges, it was either the Ivy League for competitive literature, or Georgia Tech for computer science. I looked at the debt I'd go into studying lit at Harvard, decided I could read books on my own, and headed down to Atlanta.
I dropped out at 19 due to fucking things up, and was hired by a local startup to lead their development efforts. Spent five years there honing skills and developing discipline. Came back to GT at the age of 23, still working eighty hours a week, and secured undergraduates in CS and Math. Developed a nasty methamphetamine addiction which would persist for a decade, but which allowed for tremendous study and effort. Ducked back in and got masters in CS and Nuclear Engineering while doing my second startup. Went to Texas and worked for a young NVIDIA on their compilers team. Built up a fairly serious drug distribution enterprise over this time, and funded my third startup with the proceeds. Was raided by the DEA 2013-05-13 after an ex dropped a dime. Not much was found in my condo--thankfully--but it forced a reevaluation of my life to that point.
Since then, I've worked for Google in NYC and Microsoft in ATL, and done a shitton of open source work (I'm a Debian Developer, if you're familiar with Linux). I still code for at least eight to ten hours a day. Married an incredible woman in 2015, but got divorced in 2020. No children. My code and my writing are my legacy.
I'm quite loud, enjoy making outlandish statements and agitprop, haven't driven in twenty-plus years, and am financially independent thanks to the good life of software engineering.
RAWIllumination: What sort of readers are you hoping to reach with midnight's simulacra?
nick black: My goal was to write a Serious Novel about engineering and engineers. I wanted to reach people like me, ones who lived in the world of science but drew their culture and insights from the world of literature. I wanted to tell a story of someone like myself, an extroverted, loud, slightly oblivious and easily agitated but fundamentally kind engineer; I don't like the stereotypes of engineers and scientists one typically sees. I wanted to write a book that serious scientists could read and be satisfied by, where everything could be backed up by real research.
I furthermore had spent some significant time reverse engineering the (still) classified SILEX process of uranium enrichment via laser, and wanted to put that information out there.
More than anything, I had always told myself that I would one day write novels, and wanted to see whether I had it in me. I left a 650k/year job to finish it: I knew I was one of the best in the world at low-level, high-performance UNIX programming, but had no idea whether I could write a good book. I never expected the book to sell many copies, and it's actually done better than I had hoped.
An illustration by Justin Barker for midnight's simulacra that did not wind up in the book after the scene it illustrates was cut from the book's final version.
RAWIllumination: I found the website for the artist that you used to illustrate your book, Justin Barker. Why did you decide to include illustrations, and how did you select Barker?
nick black: i had access to a phenomenal artist in Mr. Barker, and i asked him to do a drawing or two for the website. i thought the results so good that i asked for a full set of illustrations. i thought he did a fantastic job. i know illustrations have passed out of common use, and the "illustrated by" might draw some sideeye when people are looking at the book, but call it a throwback to a more elegant era.
Illuminatus comics from Nick Black's book collection
RAWIllumination: Can you describe how you discovered Illuminatus! and what the effect of the work was on you?
nick black: Oh, man. I was working at Media Play (a music/book/movies/software retailer), and someone came in looking for it in 1997. I special-ordered it for them, as we didn't have it on hand, and asked "is it good? I've never heard of it." The customer with no small mystery looked me in the eye and said, "hold on to your pineal gland." I found this sufficiently weird and foreboding to justify ordering myself a copy. The summer after I graduated high school, I was doing software development in a downtown Atlanta tower, riding MARTA a half hour each way and smoking cigarettes in their pleasant garden. I brought it with me for a week, devouring it on the train and outside.
I thought it absolutely mesmerizing. It presented a completely different philosophy than anything I'd come across until then. It fused mysticism with engineering in a way that seemed, if not plausible, at least interesting. It was esoteric but not obstructed--you could look up all the references, especially using a burgeoning internet (this was the summer of 1998).
I had two years prior found a Libertarian newspaper accidentally, with a lengthy opinion piece on legalizing drugs. Until that time, the idea of legalizing drugs had literally never occurred to me (much as I had assumed, younger and dumber, that it was against the law to be an atheist, and was surprised and shaken to find otherwise). Illuminatus! was like that, in that I was suddenly presented with ideas and systems of ethics that diverged so completely from the norm that one had to take serious time to absorb them. Yet this was clearly no crackpot author; the book was rich with reference to serious literature and respect for science. Joe Malik being a fallen Catholic-turned-engineer appealed to me, though not so much as the magnificent Hagbard Celine, who has remained a role model all my life. More than anything else, the idea of taking a slightly bitchy minor Greek goddess as one's deity and inspiration was marvelously out there.
I have called myself (and voted as) a Libertarian since finding that newpaper in 1996, and have called myself (and prayed as) a Discordian since finding that book in 1998. I've pressed it on at least twenty people, and gone through at least five personal copies (I reread it at least once a year, and have long stretches memorized). It cemented my beliefs in personal liberty, personal responsibility, the lifelong quest for learning, and doing all of this in an absurd and hostile universe. It gave me Eris, the goddess who dwells inside me and serves as a focus and justification for my efforts, my toil, my failures and successes. I consider the most important paragraph in that book to be:
“Hagbard,” George protested disgustedly. “Are you telling me Eris is real? Really real and not just an allegory or symbol? I can’t buy that any more than I can believe Jehovah or Osiris is really real.”
But Hagbard answered very solemnly, “When you’re dealing with these forces or powers in a philosophic and scientific way, contemplating them from an armchair, that rationalistic approach is useful. It is quite profitable then to regard the gods and goddesses and demons as projections of the human mind or as unconscious aspects of ourselves. But every truth is a truth only for one place and one time, and that’s a truth, as I said, for the armchair. When you’re actually dealing with these figures, the only safe, pragmatic, and operational approach is to treat them as having a being, a will, and a purpose entirely apart from the humans who evoke them. If the Sorcerer’s Apprentice had understood that, he wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble.”
Everything is true in some way, false in some way, and true and false in some way. This becomes clearer to me with each day.
Plus it was FUNNY.
I stopped smoking cigarettes 136 days ago, but sure wish I could light one up in honor of old Robert Anton Wilson right now. What a guy.
RAWIllumination: Why did you decide to model your novel after Ulysses? Were you trying to do for Atlanta what Joyce did for Dublin?
nick black: Because Ulysses was long my favorite book (as it clearly was one of RAW's), but mostly because it gave me a framework from which I could hang my story. In short, cowardice.
I hoped to tell a story of Atlanta, but knew I wouldn't have the depth of Joyce's Dublin. With that said, I did very much have in my mind the low opinion held by most of the nation for the Deep South, and wanted to make it plain that, just like California, or New York, or Ohio, we have our dullards and mehums and neophobes, but are also contributing that rare one percent of human talent. As Smokey the Bear says, don't shit in the woods -- I live here!
RAWIllumination: Ulysses is a famously difficult book. Your book "can be a nontrivial read," as you yourself say. You made a decision to have hardcore engineering and science passages, with lots of formulas. (At one point when I was frustrated, I went back and re-read the passage in the "Invocation" allowing readers to skip a few paragraphs if necessary, so I decided I could skim the bits I didn't get and just see what I COULD get from the book). There are other writers who have lots of technical stuff in their works -- Neal Stephenson and Richard Powers come to mind -- but they also try to make it more approachable for people without a technical background. Why did you decide to take the approach you did?
nick black: Four reasons: one, as you say, other people try to make it more approachable. if you want that, there are plenty of authors providing it. the science fiction i enjoy the most is "hard" scifi, particularly Greg Egan, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Fred Hoyle.
Fiction pitched at the expert is rare: it sells fewer books, and if you know expert level things, you can generally make more money practicing them than writing =]. i wanted my fiction book to still be an engaging bit of nonfiction, even for the expert.
Secondly, once again: cowardice. when i was stuck, or when i felt something was weak, i could spergily fall back to spewing hard technical data. i won't do it again in any further writing.
Third: it is a book about engineers, who by definition went to engineering school. engineering school is kinda fundamentally different from other majors. i talk to people from other schools, and they're like, "yeah we had a great discussion in class about [whatever]." We had very few discussions in engineering school, because it's understood that you are a worthless, brainless, skillfree piece of shit, and have nothing to add. The majority of people are chronically behind things. There's a constant sense of fear and loathing. even if you're feeling confident going into, say, an electromagnetics test, the prof can choose a problem that requires some weird type of diffeq solution, perhaps not even with intentional malice, and, whoops, that's a C for the semester. I've gone into a classroom and come out understanding nothing more than when I went in more times than i can count. You put on a brave face, and submit, and when you draw the occasional say 8 on an exam you exclaim "Allah, the All-Powerful, has fucked me again!" and drink. i wanted people to feel a little bit of that =].
I tried to ensure you could skip most of that and still follow the plot and characters without trouble. at the same time, there are lots of secrets and details in those sections for the people who closely read. the correlated concurrent development of a thermonuclear explosion, a cancer, and a human child is something i'm particularly proud of, and i really like the playful alliteration on p.361.
Four: i was often writing about forbidden knowledge. You've gotta give the details for such to establish street cred.
I'm glad i typed all that out. i might put it on my site.
RAWIllumination: As I understand it, you got permission to take six months off from work at Microsoft so you could write the book. Can you give us a taste of what that conversation was like?
nick black: I can give you the exact mail I sent. I would prefer that this not be reproduced, though i guess it's no big deal. It's kinda bombastic but that's how shit went down at the MSFT. I was pleased with getting this, though i thought getting my name officially lowercased in the company directory was a greater achievement. that involved fifty+ emails and three years.
[Editor's note: I did read the email, and in fact Nick carefully listed many arguments in favor of his request, not the least that he pledged to still work about ten hours a week during the six months of leave, and made other promises to avoid leaving Microsoft in the lurch. -- Tom]
RAWIllumination: Do you have other works of fiction in the works, or did you have to set that aside to concentrate on your "day job" for a bit?
Nick Black: i am unemployed at the moment! i do some consulting now and again, but am kinda living a post-dayjob life. I wrote about 200 pages of another novel and then put it aside. I might pick it back up. iIve got another planned which I've not yet started.
I'm working on a textbook, High-Performance Systems Programming. I designed a high-temperature filament dryer for 3dprinting that got picked up by CrowdSupply (https://dankdryer.com/). I spent most of the past four months studying electronics. i hope to start on the next novel, hesitantly titled Infernal Columns, RSN. If that one goes out and doesn't see some more pickup, i'll probably call it a day, fictionwise. The money isn't an issue, but i don't want to write stuff that nobody's reading.
Page from nick's copy of Finnegans Wake
RAWIllumination: As my readership has many Joyce fans, tells us about your "signed kinda beaten up first edition of Finnegans Wake."
Nick Black: hahahaha, it's got some fairly serious water damage in the back, serious enough that no real collector/library would want it anyway. i keep it in an airtight box in an attempt to keep it from developing mold or spreading said mold in a great bibliocide.
it's cool to own, but you can only look at a signature or even rub it on your testicles so many times, you know? but i got it at an excellent price, a gift to myself after finishing my masters.
RAWIllumination.net: Robert Anton Wilson told his friend Eric Wagner that Eric should read Ulysses 40 times, how many times have you read it? Do you have advice to people on how to read it when you are recommending it?
nick black: So a reread in my experience usually jumps around a good bit. i have read the lengthy Shakespeare argument of Stephen Daedalus in its entirety exactly once and don't expect to do so again. i likewise tend to skip the early elements of Nausicaa. the beginning and end of Oxen of the Sun are not really meaningfully read IMHO. With that said, i'd read the book at least five times through by the end of high school, by which time i'd memorized most of "Proteus", having read it at least a hundred times. Remember, compile times were generally much longer then =].
My advice is: do not bother with annotations the first time, but *do* read a quick summary of each chapter before and after you read it. Let things flow. Joyce does not expect you (the educated but not expert reader) to understand everything. at times he doesn't expect you to understand much of anything. If you were plopped into somebody's brain, able to sense their thoughts as they rose to the surface, how much would you understand? Not too much, for any interesting brain. Sometimes he is drilling this fact into you. There's a reason why you get two unexceptional (language-wise) chapters, then slapped in the face with "ineluctable modality of the visible". You're *supposed* to ask "what the fuck?" and angrily claim that you're an educated reader and ought be able to understand everything you come across. No! he is taking that away from you, and it's a critical part of the form.
i do not claim to understand a single page of Finnegans Wake, which i like much less than Ulysses.
Portrait of the Artist is like any number of books that came before it. Ulysses is an experiment and a revolution because it is not, and you have to accept that it is not, or you're gonna have a bad time. if you go in expecting to treat it like a standard novel, reading it for a ten-question fill-in-the-blank quiz to be administered at the beginning of class, you failed before you started.
There's shit in my book that no one without serious research in the subject is going to "understand". that's intentional. you ought feel at times buffeted by waves of uncertainty. hence the "invocation", which it pleased me to hear you cite regarding skipping some paragraphs.
RELATED LINKS
Official midnight's simulacra page
nick black's website, dankwiki
self-publishing and nuclear secrets (Interesting background on the novel).
TECHNICAL NOTE
Some of you may care, maybe some of you like computers, too. An interesting feature of the book is that it has sentences in many different languages, using fonts for the characters used by the original language. The book's credits note that it was "Created on a Debian Linux workstation using exclusively Free Software (git, Vim, LuaTEX, Memoir, GNU Make, polyglossia, CircuiTikZ, PyMOL, and GIMP) and free fonts (Gentium Book Plus,Kanit, Noto, Hack, and Symbola)."
nick comments: i put a lot of effort into formatting and the way i did footnotes. my girlfriend was yelling at me all the while, saying "if LaTeX is causing you such problems, why don't you use Word like everyone else?" and "no one is going to care whether you have the Belarusian!" to which i replied, "because LaTeX is how serious work is done, and i can fix it if i need to, and it'll look unbelievable when it's done" and "i will care."
Some of nick black's library. The cabinet with the blue light on the right has autographed books and rarities, "a signed Illuminatus!, a signed Schrodinger's Cat, and the original three paperbacks of Illuminatus (as opposed to the omnibus edition) lurk within."
Note: In the interview, sometimes nick capitalized "I" sometimes he used a lower case letter, I decided to go with both.
