Independence Lists

Books

• Stanislaw Lem, Summa Technologiae – Prescient codex from 1964 just translated into English. “…[M]an’s homeostatic activity has turned him into the master of the Earth; yet he is only powerful in the eyes of an apologist such as himself. Faced with climatic disturbances, earthquakes, and the rare but real danger of the fall of meteorites, man is in fact as helpless as he was during the last ice age. […] It is still a long way to homeostasis on a planetary scale, not to mention stellar homeostasis.”

• Tao Lin, Taipei – This excellent novel is getting reviewed like it’s Kmart realism or less charitably “autistic realism” but I received it as present-day science fiction, the main character’s subjectivity a forerunner of the hollowness we’re being pushed towards by the plaited technologies of communication, travel, and pharmaceuticals.

• Reading now: Nick Land, Fanged Noumena, Matthew De Abaitua, The Red Men, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Words

• Suborn – a bribe or inducement to break the law
• Lamella – a thin layer, membrane, tissue or platelike bone
• Symballein – token (ancient Greek “to put together,” two halves of a broken bone tablet rejoined would verify a friendship otherwise obscured by the passage of time)
• Catachresis – misapplication of a word, especially in mixed metaphor

WTB

• Acronym GT-J16 sz L
• Helmut Lang 2001 F/W leather cigarette case
• Cav Empt X Beams caterpillar tee (side note: did Skatething and Feltwell read my heart when they conceived of this line? It’s made from bits of PK Dick and 2600 Magazine and Virtuality press materials)
• Dallas Frazier – Space Command (Capitol F2813)
• Sony PVM 2030