Beta Testing the Apocalypse Archives

August 7, 2022August 7, 2022

Million Year Boom | Notes to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse

This post is part of a series: Adalbert Arcane’s expanded Notes & Theories to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse by Tom Kaczynski (Fantagraphics, 2022). This time we have Arcane’s notes on the celebrated Million Year Boom, a short dark-ecology comic. All posts in this series can be accessed here.

Million Year Boom, the best-known story by the author, found its way into the celebrated Best Nonrequired Reading anthology. It’s another Ballard-influenced story that excavates the primitive drives concealed within us under a thin veneer of civilization.

Green Boom

We demand a greener future. Global warming is irrevocably changing the planet. Humanity has become a geological agent, like asteroids, tectonic

shifts, or bat guano. Our civilization will leave a mark on geological strata. “This is the Anthropocene! We are the gods of destruction. We must do something!” At least, that’s what we like to tell ourselves.

Techno Primitive

Our late-capitalist societies (late for what?) should account for all undervalued externalities (think greenhouse emissions, exporting waste, etc.) in our biosphere. Imagine this scenario pushed to the absolute limit. Under this new regime, the entire biomass of the planet would have to be counted, weighed, measured, understood, and monetized. This kind of hyper-rationalization of all matter and biomass on the earth will result in a new scientific techno-animism.

Science and big tech do not create knowledge but clouds of data. We see science and data as a solution, but we should view them as another kind of pollution, a destabilizing process that deterritorializes societies. The most advanced science and technology are rapidly retribalizing and re-primitivizing societies. It is a paradox that most scientists and intellectuals do not want to confront.

Unrepeat

Cyclical theories of development grasp this intuitively. When there’s enough moisture in the atmosphere, the wet season arrives. When water falls to the ground, things grow. This repeats every year. The cycle can break, of course, but it eventually restabilizes into a new cyclical process. What kind of weather do clouds of data bring?

Agrarian societies think in terms of growing cycles:

• spring > summer > fall > winter > spring …

Cosmopolitan societies (Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, etc. [ 1 ]) think in terms of great ages:

• golden age > bronze age > decadent age > the fall > golden age …

These above modes are analogous.

Broken Wheel

Modern society, on the other hand, thinks in terms of binary eschatological teleology (BET):

• present > g a p o f t i m e > utopia or dystopia.

In other words, the future is binary (good/bad) and exists at an unknown distance from us. The critical difference is that we no longer view ourselves as human animals. Since we broke the cycle, we now see ourselves as beyond nature.

Even green activists who want to protect the planet imply we are more significant than nature. Or when they insist that we must de-industrialize (i.e., devolve) — the implication is that our current stage of evolution is already beyond nature. There is no understanding of the forces that we unleashed in this paradigm. [ 2 ]

RE-Cycle

To continue as a species, we need to understand two things: the cycles of a planetary society and who we are. There is no one cycle, but there are two that matter above all:

• Art > Religion > Science > Magic > Art …

• Conquest > Consolidation > Conquest …

We are animals who master territory. Mastering is conquest/consolidation. The Conquest / Consolidation cycle will be dealt with in a future post. [ 3 ]

RE-Value

The valuation of all capitalist externalities is analogous to the valuation of attention (screen time, participation, engagement, and other such metrics). However, we must supplement this process of material valuation with a spiritual (mental, ethereal) valuation. Nietzsche tried to convey this with his “reevaluation of all values” notion in Genealogy of Morality. Marx’s theory of value makes similar claims. [ 4 ] These reevaluations will happen whether we like them or not, so we must do so in a controlled fashion.

Two-Pronged Fork

The future is a choice between two options. [ 5 ] Option one: global society will destabilize and (d)evolve into techno-cyber-animist magic niche-cults competing for scarce planetary resources. We remain an Earth-bound civilization. This is the end of history, the apocalypse, the final revelation of the BET mentality.

The other option is harnessing off-planet resources. In other words, to continue our unstable but productive expansionary economics, we must expand our energy inputs using extra-planetary resources (see Utopia Dividend). This option extends our understanding of ecology beyond the planetary biosphere and creates a new cycle.

Re-Demonetize Everything

If every blade of grass has monetary value, how is that different from the animistic kami of Shinto religions? Already we can see the sprouting of this ideology in the green movements. The recent rumored correspondence between Greta Thunberg and infamous eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski (no relation to the author as far as we can ascertain) is one of the many signs.

Remonetize money

Why does everything necessary to life become expensive? Because inflationary money is worthless. In economics, money seeks stability. Since inflationary currency constantly leaks value, it must colonize all things that stay valuable. If money were stable (deflationary), all other goods would become less expensive [ 6 ]. In mythical terms, inflationary currency, Midas-like, turns everything into gold; it destroys everything. Deflationary currency, on the other hand, is Alladin’s lamp, powerful but limited by the user’s wisdom.

Economics and religious sentiments must not mix. The economic sphere must remain autonomous and independent. We must take steps to forcefully bracket economic activity from intersecting with spiritual matters. The mixing eventually results in for-profit religions, magic, and art. The blending is exciting but counter-productive. Material valuation of immaterial spheres is a recipe for disaster. These spheres should remain independent. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” [ 7 ]

Algorithmic Marxism

Though we would be loath to admit it, Marx attempted a Nietzschean revaluation of capitalist values into communist or socialist ones. Unfortunately, his critique smuggled religious, psychological, and magical values into economics. His famous formulation: “All that is solid melts into the air,” is the equivalent of “let there be light” or god’s breath that animated dead clay. If Marx flipped Hegel right side up, then we must do the same with Marx.

The Base > Superstructure formulation is another pyramid scheme. These formulations clarify in the same way that a pyramid explains the power relations embedded in society. By naming the devil (Capital), Marx gave it power unimagined before. The subsequent invention of Marxist analysis and critical theory by the Soviet states and the Frankfurt School is almost algorithmic:

• Input: a critique of the power of Capital

• Output: Capital increases its power

Critique: A Summoning

Critique constantly invents new ways for Capital to win; it is an incantation and invocation [ 8 ]. Words are the key to postmodern critique; it relies almost entirely on verbal games. These are forms of magic. The theorists are under the impression that they are banishing the entities they describe. Instead, they give them more power by concretizing, naming, and materializing them out of a previously fluid notion [ 9 ]. Many demons are born in theory courses.

Equal Opportunity Sacrifice

The dénouement of the story (p. 69-70), the awkward conflagration between Segway-riding (remember the Segway?) security guards and amped-up business execs, and the resulting bloody sigil — a blood offering and a sacrificial act — are a prophetic sign of things to come.

The valuation of all matter is flat metaphysics (flat ontology), where all objects (biotic, abiotic, or virtual) exist at a single value status. These flat (read, democratic) systems often carry primitive valuations akin to ritual sacrifices. For example, a society can achieve balance only by sacrificing entities (humans, animals, etc.). The value of each entity is equivalent in some way to the perceived value lost or gained. Power diffuses and becomes difficult to ascertain. Eye for an eye. Everyone is a potential rival. Justice can only be immanent mob justice.

Hi-Arch

Hierarchical modern and proto-modern societies paradoxically lack these mechanisms. They do value some entities over others. But, the value of entities at the top emerges from the collective value of entities below. In other words, value flows up (in contrast to trickle-down economics—another name for socialism) and aggregates.

These systems are unstable but very productive. Generating higher hierarchical levels (CEOs, Popes, politicians) can only be accomplished by raising the aggregate entities below. The higher-level entities act as anointed ‘sacrifice kings,’ ready to receive collective punishment through revolution or social scorn. It crystalizes and directs power. Justice is transcendent: law.

The hierarchical system can only improve through increased instability; this is Capitalism’s danger and paradox. Only a continuously increasing (extra-planetary) energy input can temporarily stabilize it until the next growth crisis/cycle. All stable systems (ecological, social, seasons, etc.) are only durable for a limited time. (see Utopia Dividend, 36th Chamber of Commerce).

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NOTES:

[ 1 ] Please note that I am primarily concerned with western cyclical notions. The work (Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse) is a commentary on the decline of the west.

[ 2 ] Bizarre inconsistencies arise from these lines of thinking. On the one hand, we must protect nature from humans, but on the other, we must devolve our civilization to be ‘natural.’ If all energy must be sourced from natural biomass again, we will consume all biomass. By re-naturalizing, we will destroy nature like the locust. Paradoxically, “unnatural” energy sources (like nuclear) allow us to leave biomass alone.

[ 3 ] This is expressed as territorialization/deterritorialization in Deleuze, Solve/Coagula in Alchemy, etc.

[ 4 ] How To Philosophize with a Hammer And Sickle by Jonas Čeika. Repeater Books (November 9, 2021).

[ 5 ] I know I am being very binary-eschatologically-teleological.

[ 6 ] This is a gross simplification, of course. Price fluctuation would continue depending on supply and demand. But, holding money would be analogous to how ‘investment’ works today. But, the ‘investor’ would only need to hold money instead of figuring out how to game the inflationary system by manipulating the ‘portfolio’ by following financial bubbles (property, commodity, crypto, etc.).

[ 7 ] Mark 12 : 17, The Bible, King James Version.

[8] For example, see Foucault’s work on the discursive construction of sexuality in the 19th century.

[9] This is how demonic summoning works.

Adalbert Arcane

June 12, 2022June 12, 2022

The Cozy Apocalypse; Adalbert Arcane’s Notes and Theories to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse

This post is part of a series: Adalbert Arcane’s expanded Notes & Theories to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse by Tom Kaczynski (Fantagraphics, 2022). This time we have Adalbert’s notes on two short “cozy catastrophe” [ 1 ] comics: Phase Transition and Cozy Apocalypse. All posts in this series can be accessed here.

The two stories form a diptych. The Cozy Apocalypse functions as a spiritual apotheosis to Phase Transition. The intense, primal wish to cleanse the world with a torrential flood ends in frantic splashing in a shallow muddy puddle; a welcome respite from the daily grind; a cozy catastrophe.

PHASE TRANSITION

“Walter Gropius published photographs of Buffalo’s grain elevators in the Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes (Yearbook of the German Association of Craftsmen) in 1913 (the same year Marcel Duchamp made the first of his many Bicycle Wheels).” Ten years later, in Vers Une Architecture, Le Corbusier called grain silos “the first fruits of the New Age.” [2] Almost 100 years after the inauguration of modernist architecture, we live in the civilizational equivalent of an orchard strewn with rotting fruit.

When one first encounters a silo, there’s a feeling of uncanny familiarity. The structure’s shape and presence are like experiencing a primal form, a template [3+4] for the world we encounter today; a beautiful, functional form but hollow, drained of its original functionalist context.

Our present experience is akin to the cave dwellers of the past. The world was built by someone else. We dwell inside the crumbling infrastructure like Cro-magnon inside caves. Outside our limited horizons, we stumble on unusual structures ripped from times past. Their presence, crumbling and puzzling, is an avatar of a past golden age.

COZY APOCALYPSE

This is the state of the world. We indulge in apocalyptic scenarios like candy. We see the movies, read the books, and watch the news. “The apocalypse is around the corner! How awful! Why won’t somebody do something!? Wouldn’t our lives be more exciting if it really happened?”

We wonder performatively on social media from our cozy couches.

The personal is political. We have become accustomed to reading everything through a hyper-paranoid-critical lens. Signs of the apocalypse are everywhere. All events contain threads that connect them to something big and monstrous. We see local temperature fluctuations and immediately connect them to a global climate phenomenon. All phenomena resolve into apocalyptic hyperobjects.

The death of God left a void. Old rituals and myths that shaped the world around us have been displaced by the meaningless churn of particles, processes, and invisible forces. A new magical poetic has risen to fill the void: the butterfly effect. Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? [ 5 ]

We have become the butterflies, ritualistically flapping our wings, separating recycling, donating to causes, changing our social avatars, hoping not to trigger a tornado in Texas. Maybe if we flap a little less vigorously, preferably while comfortably watching the grim news, the tornado will not come? We monitor its progress on a billion screens, [6] unconsciously willing the worst-case scenarios into existence. “See, I told you it would happen! Global warming! ‘Nuff said!” We connect the dots on our cozy couches.

NOTES:

[ 1 ] In the 1970s, science-fiction writer Brian Aldiss coined the term “cozy catastrophe” to describe a fictional plot in which a bourgeois protagonist finds pleasure while the world goes to shit. “The essence of cozy catastrophe is that the hero should have a pretty good time (a girl, free suites at the Savoy, automobiles for the taking) while everyone else is dying off,” Aldiss wrote. Quote from wired.com.

[ 2 ] “What Modernism Learned from the World’s First Grain Elevator” By Jennifer Kabat (https://www.frieze.com/article/what-modernism-learned-worlds-first-grain-elevator)

[ 3 ] The temple was the original template. The hidden source of Plato’s eternal forms, which he glimpsed during his initiation into the Eleusis Mysteries (“blessed sight and vision” witnessed in a “state of perfection” 3).

[ 4 ] Murarescu, Brian, The Immortality Key, p. 24

[ 5 ] According to Edward Norton Lorenz, an earlier formulation used a seagull instead of a butterfly: “One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a sea gull’s wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever. The controversy has not yet been settled, but the most recent evidence seems to favor the sea gulls.” We could go back as far back as Fichte to find similar ideas: “you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby… changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.” Quote from scientificamerican.com

[ 6 ] What is the cost of all this real-time monitoring? According to Heisenberg, one implication of quantum physics is that the act of measurement always disturbs the object measured. “The physical reason behind this uncertainty is that measurement, by its very nature, requires using some sort of energy–for example, shining a light on the object to be measured. Light consists of discrete units, or quanta, of energy known as photons. Shining a light on an electron means bombarding it with photons, each of which has a big effect on the electron.” How does the Heisenberg principle square with Lorenz’s Butterfly? Is there a macro-version of the Heisenberg principle? How do you accurately measure planetary-scale climate phenomena without first creating planetary-scale measuring devices? And, simultaneously, do you not fundamentally alter the planet? The modern environmental movement, born on the first Earth Day (Apr. 22, 1970), was explicitly influenced by the images of Earth broadcast from the moon by Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders (Christmas Eve; Dec. 24, 1968). Quote from bbc.com

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May 27, 2022May 27, 2022

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse: Adalbert Arcane’s Notes and Theories to the Sound Strips

This post is part of a series: Adalbert Arcane’s expanded Notes & Theories to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse (by Tom Kaczynski, Fantagraphics, 2022). This time we have Adalbert’s notes to three short sound-themed strips: White Noise, Noise, A History, Hotel Silencio. All posts in this series can be accessed here.

“The eternal silence of infinite spaces frightens me.”
Pascal

WHITE NOISE

When creating this story, the author claims he was unaware of Don DeLillo’s novel with the same title (see Hotel Silencio and Noise, a History).

NOISE, A HISTORY

Noise, a History was written and drawn before Music for Neanderthals. This one page distills the author’s interest in the development of sound, noise, and other auditory phenomena. One can imagine the Big Bang, the silent explosion of our universe into being, as containing all the sounds of the universe. Think of white light comprising all the visible and invisible spectrum colors. Noise, A History, functions as a signal detector filter that isolates specific notes and harmonies from the noise of the Big Bang.

When you add all the sounds together, do you get silence? Or a massive cacophony? We are constantly detecting new sounds produced by that ur-explosion. The history of civilization is discovering and manufacturing new auditory phenomena and the privatization of sound.

HOTEL SILENCIO

“In the absence of sound, you become the sound.”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/orfield-labs-quietchamber

The quietest room in the world is in Minnesota, approximately five minutes from where the author currently lives. The story was written before the author moved into the area. It is unknown if he moved to be closer to the anechoic chamber. The experience inside the room is described as maddening.

It is surprising how much humans rely on principles of echolocation for their stability and their relationship to the world. It has recently been discovered [ 1 ] that memories are spatial. Our selves are built from accrued layers of spatially tagged memories—we are a memory palace. We exist in a personal echo chamber that constantly depends on outside sound to orient itself on the principle of echolocation.

The ambient sound of the world (see White Noise) acts as an aetheric substance that allows us to move through the world by orienting via sound and vision. It allows us to be outward-oriented, following the sounds and sights of the world or the desiring machine. This is also known as a ‘body without organs’ in Deleuzian terms.

That relationship is fundamentally broken when you ‘become the sound’ inside the anechoic chamber. The sound of your internal organs reminds you that there’s no there, there. There’s nothing to anchor you to the outside. The phone call (of your consciousness) is coming from inside the house! The desiring machine breaks down. You become ‘organ without body’… analogous to a schizophrenic steaming mass of microbial life arranged in shapes and patterns; a chattering miasmic fluid; a viscous semi-liquid bag of mostly water with skin stretched tight like a drum. Who is playing the drum?

NOTES:

[ 1 ] “Your Mind is a Vast Landscape” by Adalbert Arcane in Cartoon Dialectics #2, Uncivilized Books, 2020

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March 7, 2022May 27, 2022

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse: Adalbert Arcane’s Notes and Theories to 976 SQ. FT.

Continuing with Adalbert Arcane’s expanded Notes & Theories to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse (by Tom Kaczynski, Fantagraphics, 2022). This time we have Adalbert’s notes to two stories: 100 Decibels, 976 SQ. Ft. All posts in this series can be accessed here.

100 DECIBELS

It is currently unknown why the author has created this comic. It is also clear that he had not read Schopenhauer’s On Noise at this time.

976 SQ. FT.

976 SQ FT (976) is another story that the author claims is “autobiographical.” We have been able to corroborate some of the details. For example, the map (see above) included with the story is accurate; the area depicted exists in Brooklyn, just around the Manhattan Bridge overpass. Apocryphally it appears that the small neighborhood near DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and Vinegar Hill briefly attempted to rebrand as RAMBO (Right After the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). The unfortunate rename was an early warning signal. The irrational real estate bubble was ready to burst and inaugurate a big recession of the American economy (Global Crisis of 2007-8). We can confirm that several massive condominium complexes were being built in and around the neighborhood at the time, so the psychotectural (psycho-architectural) effects of the structure are plausible.

Haunted by the Future

The story is ostensibly a gentrification horror narrative. It is a trope common enough and not particularly original. Typically, new construction of some kind disturbs the residents of a neighborhood. The mystery is usually solved when the source of the haunting is revealed as a disturbed grave, burial ground, or some other source of crime that stains this piece of land (see Poltergeist, Pet Sematary, etc.).

So what are we afraid of? Horror tends to rely on past transgressions. It is usually guilt of past misdeeds that torments the protagonist. Or, in other variations, a past justice must be righted, and the repercussions emanate into the present, sometimes haunting the innocent (this is also the psychology of original sin).

Tom Kaczynski’s story subverts the trope by ostensibly placing the source of the haunting into the future. Why should only the past haunt us? Why can’t the future haunt us as well? Our future is colonized by reified collective apocalyptic nightmare entities: climate, pandemic, overpopulation, war, etc. ad nauseam. Their presence is precisely that of a specter. They always appear or recede from a fog of statistics, politics, and propaganda. Their contours change and fluctuate in indeterminate shapes like the cosmic horrors of HP Lovecraft. But is this really what we are afraid of?

Apocalypse / Utopia

The anticipation of a future event is real horror. What will happen next? Our imagination takes over creating a variety of scenarios from benign to terrifying. The future is scary. Take an everyday person of modest means, someone who just lives their life in the present moment. No war, no crime, just a regular job that becomes routine and boring. Where is the fear? The small everyday fears, tend to resolve quickly. A scary office meeting turns out better than expected. A worrisome confrontation with a friend or partner resolves without a major incident. This works on a narrative level as well. Think of all the “cheap scares” you have to endure before the final source of the haunting is revealed in a film or comic book.

Time and space and fear intertwine. Fear grows uncontrollably when you begin to expand the anticipated event in size (space) and distance (time). One must not forget that atmosphere contributes to fear. Lighting, fog, etc. all enhance the uncertainty of the outcome and inflate the fear. In other cases, massive amounts of data, enormous or tiny numbers, act as a kind of information fog—similar to the fog of war—and further enhance the fear response. The climate apocalypse is an example of one such inflated event. The formula works always: distant the future + significant the time gap + data fog = the apocalypse. [ 1 ]

The Pleasure of the Apocalypse

We often rely on artifice: films, television, novels, comic books. But this isn’t real. It is a game to jolt some old instinct awake; fear detourned to pleasure. One can argue that the proliferation of apocalyptic media is really a wish to try to break out of our present predicament. In that sense, most apocalyptic fiction and politics must be seen as a subgenre of utopian literature. It ultimately serves as a way to shift attention from our present predicament to some new, largely unspecified world beyond the veil of the apocalypse. It cannot be the real source of the horror.

No Space is the Place

Fiction, propaganda, etc. rely on distance (in time or space) to inflate the fear of the future or the other. However, our spatial & time horizons have shrunk. In 976, the horizon (of meaning) is very literally blocked by the massive condominium. Time and space are inextricable. As our spatial horizon shrinks [ 2 ], so does time. The past, present, and future become intertwined and compressed into a “flat circle.” Centuries squeeze, and time leaks between epochs. These leaks of time spill into our world. Concepts, ideas, dead individuals all become bound up into a Hauntological melange: time is out of joint; time is a flat circle; space is contracting and flattening; the future is here, but it’s not evenly distributed. We have a situation.

In the previous post on 10,000 Years, we examined the real fear permeating our minds: the permanent present. As such, 976 should be seen as the first story in the collection to explicitly point to the source of the haunting. It is neither the past nor the future, but the endless proliferation of the present. This is the true terror that haunts the apocalyptic minds in all Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse stories. For Lilli, the haunted protagonist of 976, the future residents of the condo who descend into her space (via entity gateways like MySpace) are really a proliferation of the present into the future… permanent present. What does the future hold? More of the same. Things cannot continue on the current path.

Distant Vistas

Space and time are necessary for critical distance. Without space, we can’t see the whole picture; we become trapped inside larger structures we can’t perceive. Without time we can’t perceive the change and the origins of our traps. In other words, we must wake up to the horror of living inside Mortonian hyperobjects. [ 3 ]

We can also confirm that an old woman named Nadine lived in the area, and she owned a small dog.

Next time: White Noise, Noise, a History, and Hotel Silencio

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NOTES:

[ 1 ] This is analogous to the “utopian gap” identified and theorized in Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions by Fredric Jameson (Verso, 2007). Utopia must always exist beyond a gap of space or time. The gap is always vague and non-specific.

[ 2 ] This could be a callback to Kaczynski’s Vague Cities (VC, published by Uncivilized Books, 2005) [link to zine archive and PDF?], in which the light of the stars is slowly blotted out by the expansion of cities. Vague Cities is an early story exhibiting Romatiscist tendencies. Kaczynski views civilization as an artificial artifact in conflict with nature. In reality, cities are not consuming the world. They are gravity wells that concentrate humanity in smaller and smaller spaces. The growth of cities paradoxically removes humans from hinterlands and opens new vistas for uncontrolled natural space. While VC is a Romanticist screed against civilization running roughshod over nature, 976 diagnoses the problem more precisely.

[ 3 ] See Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World by Timothy Morton (University of Minnesota Press, 2013)

February 15, 2022February 15, 2022

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse: Notes and Theories to 10,000 Years by Adalbert Arcane

Adalbert Arcane’s expanded Notes & Theories to Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse (by Tom Kaczynski, Fantagraphics, 2022). This ongoing series of posts started here.

Slumbering Towards the Future

On the surface, 10,000 Years (10K YRS, originally published in MOME 8, 2007) resembles science fiction classics like HG Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes, or Edward Bellamy’s utopian magnum opus, Looking Backward. It follows the familiar trope of a sleeping man, who awakens far in the future through some unexplained time fluke. Most variants of this trope, depict the future as something concrete: something we fear or desire. The future tends to be either positive or negative, utopia or dystopia.

The main protagonist is probably named after Edgar Cayce, the famous Sleeping Prophet. Cayce is best known for predicting that Atlantis would be found in the ’60s in the vicinity of the Bahama Islands. Atlantean lore is an ongoing concern for the Author. A genealogy of this ancient lost world was explored in Trans Atlantis. Edgar Cayce also figures prominently in the notorious and unreleased “lost” chapter to Trans Terra [ 1 ] cycle of stories.

The one thing our modern imagination cannot fathom is a future that remains fundamentally the same. And yet, this was the state of humanity for millennia. Imagine a caveman troglodyte living during the paleolithic 40-50 thousand years ago. Was there a future for such a creature? Did he imagine a world of tomorrow? Was he imagining new super-Neolithic technologies? Judging by the scant evidence left to archaeologists, not much progress or change happened for tens of thousands of years. It seems impossible, yet it DID happen at some point. How? When? (See Music For Neanderthals). The gap between them and us is vast and difficult to bridge.

The Eternal Present

We see the eternal present as the provenance of non-human animals. Can we look at our ancient ancestors as less human? Modern humans have a glitch (or a gift, depending on your POV). We have an internal mirroring process (aka self-consciousness) that enables us to become stuck “out of time.” This glitch/gift is what makes us human.

At some point, we began to transform the environment around us. That transformation required more significant and fantastic planning (i.e., awareness of the future; more on this in future notes). Future awareness scales with human numbers. When humans began to congregate in large settlements, the gap between the future and the present decreased.

Paradoxically the past conditions the future. Depending on the success or failure of a community, the future imagination becomes influenced by past events. It becomes constrained by previous events. The community can develop a sense of helplessness and anticipate a future apocalypse. Or, a series of successes can instill visions of a brighter future and perpetual progress (of some sort).

End of History

We, the moderns, are split. We imagine either utopian possibilities or dire catastrophes. The one thing many of us cannot conceive is an unchanging present extending infinitely into the future. And yet, this is the predicament we find ourselves in. Since the mid-1970s, progress (technological, etc.) has stalled in many ways. The future imagined by our ancestors from the first half of the 20th century has stalled. No flying cars, no moon bases, etc. The technologies which have progressed since then: computers, digital communication, virtual reality, etc., are primarily cybernetic in the realm of personal augmentation. In fact, most of these technologies can be seen as elaborations on the mirror.

10,000 Years, Page 3, panels 9-11 (patent pending)

10K YRS story is remarkable for being written and published years before Peter Thiel’s Zero To One business screed. In this book, Thiel (did Thiel read this comic?) posits that the economic development of atoms (machines, devices, physical items, energy) has not kept up with the growth of bits (programmatic computer products like VR, big data, etc.) The power and speed of computers have increased, but we have not made much progress in the physical realm. Much of the world relies on the infrastructure invented, built, and developed in the 20th century. 10K YRS anticipated this analysis and stretched this idea into the far future. 10K YRS is a concise and prophetic elaboration of Fukuyama’s End of History thesis. We are forever suspended in this world like a dead fetus floating in embalming fluid unless something or someone can get us out.

Mars Attacks

The protagonist learns that he is a Martian or potentially Martian in the final sequence. It represents the author’s intuitive understanding that the current static social and political consensus can only be shaken loose by something external to capitalism, communism, civilization, humanity, and the planet.

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra

Mars in our present is a distant anchor of possibility. A tether stretches between Earth & Mars; Zarathustra’s rope upon which man/superman must learn to walk. The only other option: the slow entropic death of the last man flattened by the oppressive gravity of mother earth.

The external event alluded to is the colonization of Mars. (see Utopia Dividend) This event, in theory, would accelerate [ 2 ] technological development in the material sphere, exploit vast new energy sources, and generate a vast quantity of new economic opportunities in the off-world colonies (see Blade Runner).

Haunted or Haunting?

The vision of Marxist zombies on Mars is a nod to the specter that has haunted history: Marx and Marxism and the idea of progress itself. At one point, a Marxist revolution begins unfolding on Mars. The Marxists are depicted as zombies, an explicit call-out to George Romero’s later zombie films, which identify the proletariat with zombies. In his earlier films, zombies were bourgeois consumers wreaking havoc in shopping malls. Now zombies are the proletariat, forever hated, reduced to a zombie-like state; empathy withdrawn.

The Zombie is a figure that acquires new abilities and meanings during different epochs.

The author (Tom Kaczynski) melds those two interpretations via zombie Marx’s detourned speech: “A specter is haunting Mars – the specter of consumerism. […] Consumers of the solar system, save your receipts.” It is a haunting passage that both reaffirms that the revolutionary class is dead and permanently subsumed by the consumertariat.

The revolutionary potential of Marxism has been drained of all energy by the grey vampires [ 3 ]. Zombie Marx embodies the current form of late-capitalist-socialist activism: specifically, the “I’ve got the receipts” [ 4 ] brand of cancel culture that haunts social(ist) media. [ 5 ] The communism—the engine of the events of the 20thcentury—that haunted Marx’s 19th century is now a rotting husk of flesh shambling, decomposing, and liquefying into toxic sludge. Can anything grow in its wake?

Of the twin towers of the 20th century: capitalism & communism, one has already fallen. How long can the other stand?

Notes:

[ 1 ] The collected edition of Trans Terra has yet to be released.

[ 2 ] This is distinct from accelerationism.

[ 3 ] See Mark Fisher’s Exiting the Vampire Castle.

[ 4 ] Sometimes also manifested as complaints to managers or bosses in order to cause economic damage to the “canceled” person.

[ 5 ] It should be mentioned that the term “cancel culture” is controversial. It’s ontological status is generally questioned by the agents that perform the “cancelling.”

Social Media is a Web2 technology, and as such, it is seen by many as something new and unprecedented and by others as a simple, linear intensification of Web1 (the original internet). Initially, Social Media was hailed for its potential as a tool against authoritarian regimes. Who remembers that the Arab Spring was hailed as a beautifu Twitter Revolution? Today, Twitter Revolution bring connotations of “dark internet,” or “misinformation.” It is now viewed with more suspicion. Why is that? A case has been made (and more on this in future posts) that Social Media (as instantiated in the Web2 context) has achieved its true form. In form, it most resembles the Stasi citizen spying program developed by the East German Communist regime. It weaponized daily social interactions and created incentives for citizens to “keep tab”s on each other.

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Adalbert Arcane

February 5, 2022February 5, 2022

Frank Santoro on Beta Testing The Ongoing Apocalypse

This is a blast from the past. I was organizing some old links and this jumped out immediately! It’s an old ComicComics (who also misses ComicsComics?) post written by Frank Santoro. My comics at the time were appearing in the MOME anthology published by Fantagraphics. Frank’s take on my comics was an important and eye-opening moment for me. As I’m posting Adalbert Arcane’s notes to the new edition, it was fun to revisit this take. The post predates (by a few years) the first collected edition of Beta Testing the Apocalypse.

Frank has a fun no-nonsense writing style. A few snippets:

“This isn’t a review or anything that attempts to cast a truly critical eye on the comics work of Tom Kaczynski. It’s more of an appreciation. For me, Tom’s work is an oasis in the desert. And the desert is contemporary alternative comics. I find 80% of today’s alt-comics poorly constructed — a veritable colony of lean-to shacks that could be blown over in a strong wind. In contrast, Tom K builds comics that could be likened to a brick house. These are solid comics. Is it any surprise that many of his stories have to do with architecture or that he went to architecture school?”

[…]

I feel firmly rooted in Tom’s stories. I understand where the characters are, where I am as a reader. Never a bottle-necked area of the page or spread. It’s all very clear and airy, like walking through some Beaux-Arts 19th century library building. There are clear sight lines and strong centers on every page.

On 100,000 Miles:

The “Highway Story” (100,000 miles) is interesting because it balances a certain sense of movement along with a realistic, believable sense of scale. Cars packed on a highway in slow motion, car crashes, cars lined up in a parking lot. Close-ups of the protagonist in his car and long shots of endless highway ribbons. It’s a short story, maybe only 8 or 9 pages—yet within the first couple pages a world is defined by the landscape itself.

On 976 sq ft:

The “Condo Story” (976 sq ft) in contrast is less about balancing movement & scale as it is about scale itself. It opens with a couple on a rooftop looking down on to the street where a woman is walking a dog. So immediately here is the set-up: Seeing the world, or more specifically a neighborhood as a scale model. There is also a wonderful transition where the condo in real life fades into an architectural scale model of the same building.

On Million Year Boom:

The “Corporation Story” (Million Year Boom). I can clearly see in my mind how perspectives & sightlines carry the reader across panels and the spreads of this story. There are very strong “horizontals” in this story (almost in counterpoint to the strong “verticals” present in the “condo story”). The corporate headquarters is low & wide, and the page compositions are tailored to convey the sense of open yet contained space. There’s a great scene when the protagonist dives into a long rectangular pool that spans two panels.

On Influences:

I really enjoy his writing and drawing. He definitely owes a debt to the works of J.G. Ballard and Daniel Clowes. This is not a bad thing. Ballard was a surgeon with his words and the same could be said for Clowes with his drawing. Kaczynski has incorporated both masters’ approaches into his own work in a way that I find inspirational. He went through his influences and came out on the other side with something new, something his own. Like some hauntingly familiar “house style,” the approach fits the subject matter like a glove.

Read the full post by Frank Santoro

I can’t overemphasize how personally important this post was back when I was working on these stories for MOME. It’s rare when you find a reader that looks at your works this closely and just groks the vibe. Frank zeroes in on several sequences and moments that I agonized over. To have a reader unpack the structure of the comics with such precision was (and still is) personally very gratifying and gave me the oxygen to keep working on this material. I don’t know if I ever said thank you? Thank you, Frank!

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January 30, 2022February 15, 2022

Adalbert Arcane’s Notes and Theories: 100,000 MILES

Introduction

We begin a new series of guest posts from Adalbert Arcane, the writer of Notes & Theories section of the new edition of Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse (BTTOA). The story covered is the first in the BTTOA cycle. This is the story that launched this project in the first place.

Who is Adalbert Arcane? Adalbert Arcane is a noted psychogeographer and the co-founder (with Tom Kaczynski) of Omniversity. He has an honorary fellow at OPA (Office for Psycho-Architecture).

Notes & Theories: 100,000 MILES

100,000 Miles by Tom Kaczynski page 1 — **100,000 Miles**, page 1

AOL / TW

The author (Tom Kaczynski) claims personal events inspired this story. The details are sketchy, but some information can be pieced together from various infrequent interviews. The author did live in the Washington, DC area at the time of the creation of this story. He claims his commute to his job (when he was employed on a secret prototyping division of AOL/TimeWarner (AOL/TW) headquartered near the Dulles airport) was approximately 45 minutes each way. This is plausible as traffic in the DC/Virginia tech corridor is notorious.

The imagery of the comic resembles the freeway edgelands of the Herndon/Reston/Sterling suburban sprawl one would have to traverse to reach the AOL/TW HQ.

100,000 Miles, page 6, panel 1 by Tom Kaczynski — **100,000 Miles**, page 6, panel 1

Ballard

J.G. Ballard’s car novels influenced 100,000 Miles [1]. The author makes this explicit on the page (see p. 14, panel 1). This author wears his influences on the sleeve.

Ballard’s Crash! and Concrete Island explore the psycho-sexual relationship between vehicles and drivers. Cars’ sleek chassis and leather barely conceal their latent deep pathology and violence. Drivers enter into a primitive hypnotic state as they begin to physically merge and identify with their vehicles. Violent collisions are moments of truth. The moment of the crash results in an erotic merger of steel, leather, and flesh [2].

In 100,000 Miles, the car is ubiquitous, commonplace, and tame. The Ballardian charge has already dissipated [3].

The protagonist drives aimlessly, trying to avoid work. The drive is a tedious and uneventful background that serves as a blank canvas for rumination and reverie. Is it a deliberate counterpoint to Debord’s Derivé, where a flaneur traverses the city in rapid succession of ambiances? The car is a sensory deprivation chamber—a theme that the author returns to repeatedly (see Hotel Silencio, Million Year Boom, and Music for Neanderthals)—floating through a generic suburban wasteland. Occasionally the Real bursts through accidents and traffic jams. Like in Goddard’s Weekend, the traffic jam and the accident reveal the occulted meaning beneath the freeway concrete.

Break With the Past

This story distinctly breaks with the author’s other work (to be collected as Trans Terra, which attempts a sharp social critique in comics form) both formally and narratively. The Beta Testing The Apocalypse (BTTA) project seeds already appear here: obsession with numbered titles, easter eggs that connect each story, sly references to the source material, absurd fictional scenarios, etc.

100,000 Miles, page 7, panel 3 by Tom Kaczynski — **100,000 Miles**, page 7, panel 3

Traffic Jam / Hyperobject

At what point is the traffic jam real, a real object, an entity that has existential status? The author complicates the ontological status of the traffic jam. Sometimes we drive, and traffic seems to flow without delays, but another traffic jam is already forming somewhere ahead of us. Is each traffic jam a distinct entity? Or is the entirety of the automobile fleet simply in various states of the same continuous global traffic jam in various states of territorialization and deterritorialization?

These ideas parallel Timothy Morton’s work on hyperobjects and the contemporaneous work of the Object-Oriented Philosophical clique. OOP proposes novel metaphysics, reevaluates the ontological status of objects, and posits a positive flat ontology (more on this in notes on Million Year Boom).

The now-famous denouement of the infinite traffic jam sets the stage for the ongoing questioning of the ontological status of everyday reality throughout the book. This sequence is likely the genesis of the whole BTTA project.

[1] Originally appeared in Backwards City Review, 2006. First appearance in color: MOME 7, 2007.

[2] Though not explicitly based on Ballard, the Tetsuo, the Iron Man film best visualizes the flesh-machine hybrid.

[3] Ballard himself (as a writer at least) moved on to other libidinal-liminal zones, shopping malls, resorts, etc.

Adalbert Arcane

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January 20, 2022January 28, 2022

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse Update

The dates keep moving on the release of Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse. The release shifted from February to March 15th, 2022.

A few folks asked what will be different about the new edition. Besides being a hardcover, the new edition has a number of differences from the first edition:

A brand new cover (see above).
Three more stories. One previously unpublished.
An introduction by Christopher Brown.
Several pages of notes and theories by Adalbert Arcane.
Expanded Index.

You can order signed copies directly from me on this site:

Preorder Signed Copy Directly From Me

or via Uncivilized Books here:

Preorder From Uncivilized Books

Order the book directly from Fantagraphics here:

Preorder From Fantagraphics

Also available from Amazon, etc.

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Tom K

November 8, 2020November 8, 2020

Tom Kaczynski in Conversation with Noah Van Sciver

A couple of days ago I had the pleasure of chatting with Noah Van Sciver. We hit lots of topics, Uncivilized Books, publishing, comics, reminiscences, etc. I also get to hype some upcoming projects including Cartoon Dialectics, I Nina by Daniel Chmielewski & Olga Tokarczuk, and a new edition of Beta Testing the Apocalypse!

Artist, illustrator, and publisher of Uncivilized Books, Tom Kaczynski, and I have a conversation about drawing and publishing comics during these weird times. Tom’s newly reinvigorated series Cartoon Dialectics has been sweeping the small comics scene like a wildfire.

Also discussed: science fiction as the literary fiction of today, Polish comics, the Critical Cartoon series, Bruno Schulz, and much more!

Most importantly the video features my first haircut since the onset of COVID… a small 2020 victory. Enjoy!

December 13, 2013

Signing Some Books

Just signin’ some Beta Testing The Apocalypse. Get your own signed copy (with a free Skyway Sleepless!) here.

December 12, 2013

Skyway Sleepless + Signed Books

Ho ho ho! I recently released a new mini-comic: Skyway Sleepless. It originally appeared in Twin Cities Noir. You can buy it on the Uncivilized Books site… OR if you’ve always wanted a signed copy of Beta Testing The Apocalypse but couldn’t get one, I’m offering them now for a limited time here. All copies will come with a free copy of Skyway Sleepless! Order now!

September 12, 2013September 12, 2013

DERNIERS TESTS AVANT L’APOCALYPSE at SPX

I’ll be manning the Uncivilized Books table (table i8) at SPX all weekend! I’ll be there with Kevin Huizenga, Dan Zettwoch, Zak Sally & Peter Wartman. Stop by to say hi!

Meanwhile, look what I got in the mail!