/lit/ - Literature

just tell me about it slowly memes aside

>>12068099
Cyclonopedia is theoretical-fiction novel by Iranian philosopher and writer Reza Negarestani. Hailed by novelists, philosophers and cinematographers, Negarestani’s work is the first horror and science fiction book coming from and written on the Middle East.

'The Middle East is a sentient entity—it is alive!’ concludes renegade Iranian archaeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the ‘lubricant’ of historical and political narratives.
A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along.
Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil ...
At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, CYCLONOPEDIA is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archaeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.

>>12068101

Stop reading the book, anon.

>>12068101
Sounds like Dune but malevolent

>>12068101
Okay, now can you give me a better description without copypasting the summary on the back?

>>12068190
ungrateful nigga

>>12068192
Seriously, I'm 50 pages in, and I have no idea what the fuck I'm reading. I was hoping you would give me a better description.

>>12068190
why don't you look at some pages to get a general idea of how it's like? dl it from libgen.
the overall gist it just that. and it makes lots of hamfisted references to esoteric texts, philosophy, CCRU numogram and ...
It's basically Ready Player One for avant-teens.

>>12068226
>avant-teens
I highly doubt they would have more than a tenable understanding of Anti-Oedipus and Nick Land even grasp Cyclonopedia.

>>12068313
Agreed. Reza's work lacks the wackiness to appeal to teens on facebook meme pages.

>>12068226
>It's basically Ready Player One for avant-teens.

>>12068099
You aren't going to make it.

>>12068190
Oil is sentient

>>12068101
Unironically peaked my interests

>>12069312
>peaked
Cmon son

what the fuck am I reading?
this lunatic overdosed on Lovecraft and turned into Abdul Alhazred

go to sleep, reza

>>12068101
> delta force
Oh boy this is gonna be fun seeing how he fucks up SOF operators

>>12068113
Based

I’ve taken a class with reza. Guy is decently knowledgeable but doesn’t have the mental horsepower to be as sharp as is needed where he’s trying to go if you catch my drift

>>12069573
>your

>>12069955
That sounds fantastic

>>12069955
kekked

>>12067899
>Reply
someone did a poor job cleaning that glass. can we get a squeegee up in there?

>>12068101
Coming soon to a theater near you, the biggest show of the summer:

Goodfellas: Middle East edition

>>12069312
*sparked

>>12068101
>Negarestani’s work is the first horror and science fiction book coming from and written on the Middle East.
Sounds like a weird thing to emphasize

>>12070222
Don't need horror books when ISIS is beheading people and burning them alive, or you are chopping people up and putting them into suitcases.

>>12070244
Based

>>12070222
To put this into perspective, in the past 1000 years, there have been less books published in Arabic than there were English novels published last year. The nations of the middle east are oddly against books, so it's probably just touted because it's a unique trait to have.