Review: midnight's simulacra by Nick Black

 

"code stoned. debug sober. document drunk.and never trust the nuclear regulatory commission."

midnight's simulcra is a challenging but interesting novel from Nick Black, an engineer who attended Georgia Tech University; the novel is largely set on the campus of Georgia Tech or in Atlanta. It is consciously modeled on Ulysses by James Joyce and also draws much of its inspiration from Illuminatus! 

It was published last year. The official website bills it as "a hysterical, scientifically rigorous, slow burn of a thriller, a modern picaresque, a portrait of autists as young men, and unlike any other novel you've read" and as "An autofiction of rogue engineering."

I would describe it as an ambitious work of modern fiction. Anyone who is familiar with Ulysses will see many references to it in midnight's simulacra. There is for example an interior monologue by a a woman in the novel obviously modeled after the one by Molly Bloom. The plot is driven by the interactions of two males with intersecting lives: Sherman Spartacus Katz and Michael Luis Bolaño, although the action takes place over many  years, not in just one day.  They meet at an academic quiz bowl and decide to both attend Georgia Tech. They eventually get into large scale LSD manufacturing and distributing and then Katz gets interested in smuggling and enhancing yellowcake  uranium.

Just as Ulysses fans can visit actual places in Dublin that are mentioned  in the novel, midnight's simulacra takes place in numerous real Atlanta locations. For example, there's an important confrontation in an Atlanta bar, where Bolaño buys a drink for the "Molly Bloom" character. I looked it up, and it's an actual Atlanta bar; you can go there  and buy the same drink. 

Nick Black's Goodreads account shows that he has read many important modern novels (David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I haven't gotten around to, is apparently another favorite). 

His novel's most daring innovation is the various nonfiction essays and explanations on various aspects of science, including how to manufacture LSD, the history of modern cosmology, the history of illicit LSD manufacturing in the U.S., and many other topics. Many of these lectures-within-the-novel are quite dense with mathematical  formulas and technical terms. In the introduction to the book, Black gives the reader "permission" to skim the portions of the book that are too difficult. I really learned a lot from this book, although sections were opaque to me. I use Linux for example, but I'm not a coder, and I could not follow everything that was happening when Katz fears his machine has been compromised and he reinstalls Debian Linux (a form of Linux considered more difficult to use than, say, Ubuntu or Linux Mint, distros that cater to nontechnical users. Among his numerous interests, Black is a Debian developer). 

So portions of the book can be difficult, although having said that, the main story is not difficult to follow. I would say that while Ulysses is largely driven by Bloom's interest in sex, midnight's simulacra tends to focus on drugs (some of the characters use a bong named after a Klein bottle, a good example of the intersection of interests). In addition, while Ulysses is generally life-affirming, midnight's simulcra can be read as kind of a tragedy. 

The five main sections of the novel are named after the five main sections of Illuminatus!, and references to Eris and to phrases such as "Hail Eris!" and "All Hail Discordia" figure prominently. As with Ulysses, there are more references to Illuminatus! that careful readers will catch. 

And here is a bit of synchronicity, one that I don't know if Nick Black knows about: As far as I know, the only literary award Illuminatus! ever received was the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, given at the Worldcon in Atlanta in 1986. (I attended the Worldcon, one of my favorites, but did not know about the ceremony and missed it). 

Portions of the book are quite funny in a dark, sardonic way, e.g. "You can always know the right way to interpret a situation by where Sartre, history's biggest piece of shit, stood on it." 

midnight's simulacra is available for purchase at the official website and also at Amazon, in hardcover, paperback and ebook. (The paper editions are the preferred editions and  include illustrations the ebooks don't have; I have ordered a copy of the paperback). 

The official website also has a hefty "try before you buy" excerpt of the first part and interesting background on the novel, including a partial bibliography of the references.