caracabe's review against another edition
I really wanted to like this book. This is the second time I’ve tried to read it. I have nothing against difficult books (I like quite a few of them), but for me, this one doesn’t provide a payoff proportionate to the effort.
inkstained's review against another edition
3.0
Finishing this was a relief. It wasn't bad or not written well, but I'm not smart enough to understand anything that was discussed.
megapolisomancy's review against another edition
1.0
Maeby: No, deep is good. People are going to say, “What the hell just happened? I better say I like it.” ’Cause nobody wants to seem stupid.
Rita: I like it!
Somewhere, in some beautiful alternate universe, some years ago the young Iranian student Reza Negarestani was denied entry to the graduate school of the University of Warwick and, crushed, never received any academic training in the field of philosophy. After wallowing in disappointment for a few years, he channeled his despondency into Cyclonopedia, a beautiful and despairing horror novel that densely wove together critical theory and the story of an American artist stranded in Istanbul to re-imagine the geopolitics of oil in the Middle East as an occult attack by ancient Lovecraftian horrors out to turn the entire Earth into a desert.
In our humdrum reality, though, Negarestani did go to grad school and did become impressed with how many ridiculous theoretical neologisms he could create and so just tricked someone into publishing his notes for said novel. That or he wrote an essay/article that was not accepted anywhere so he plopped it into a "frame story" (ie 5 pages and a few footnotes) and published it as a novel. I don't know. This would be a good joke if Negarestani (and apparently everyone else on goodreads?) didn't take it so seriously.
I mean, here are his philosophical interests:
"Subsurface Political Geography; Surface Globalization; Underground Facilities and Chthonic Militarization; Archeology as the Science of Military Education in 21st Century; Tora Bora and the Cappadocian Complex; Worm Factor; Middle Eastern Necropolises and Underground Nuclear Facilities; Petropolitics, Guerilla-states and Architecture of Holes; Videogame Rhetoric and Memory as the Models of Alien Incursion; Poromechanics of War."
This is what informs his fiction, which would be fine, except that I lied and there's no fiction being informed by anything here - that list, with some conjunctions and prepositions tossed in, is pretty much what this book is. Seriously, this is the most unreadably pretentious nonsense I have ever encountered and man, I can usually get into some embarrassingly pretentious nonsense. Not to mention the fact that it's also flatly and awkwardly written. There is no art to any of it.
LOOK AT THIS:
In both Drujite and Lovecraftian polytics of radical exteriority, omega-survival or strategic endurance is maintained by an excessive paranoia that cannot be distinguished from a schizophrenic delirium. For such a paranoia - saturated by parasitic survivalism and persistence in its own integrity - the course of activity coincides with that of schizo-singularities. Paranoia, in the Cthulhu Mythos and in Drujite-infested Zoroastriansim, manifests itself as a sophisticated hygiene-Complex associated with the demented Aryanistic obsession with purity and the structure of monotheism. This arch-sabotaged paranoia, in which the destination of purity overlaps with the emerging zone of the outside, is called schizotrategy. If, both for Lovecraft and the Aryans, purity must be safeguarded by an excessive paranoia, it is because only such paranoia and rigorous closure can attract the forces of the Outside and effectuate cosmic akienage in the form of radical openness - that is, being butchered and cracked open. Drujite cults fully developed this schizotrategic line through the fusion of Aryanistic purity with Zoroastrian monotheism. The Zoroastrian heresiarchs such as Akht soon discovered the immense potential of schyzotrategy for xeno-calls, subversion and sabotage. As a sorcerous line, schizotrategy opens the entire monotheistic culture to cosmodromic openness and its epidemic meshworks. As the nervous system of Lovecraftian strategic paranoia, openness is identified as 'being laid, cracked, butchered open' through a schizotrategic participation with the Outside. In terms of the xeno-call and schizitrategy, the non-localizable outside emerges as the xeno-chemical inside or the Insider.
... 'If openness, as the scimitar blade of the outside, seeks out manifestations of closure, then in the middle-eastern ethic it is imperative to assuage the external desire of the Outside by becoming what it hungers for the most' (H. Parsani)."
Schizotrategy. This is a book that uses the word "schizotrategy" seriously. This would work as a brief essay satirizing the absurdity of the field, but as a serious book-length meditation...
This is meta-fiction with the fiction removed, an exegesis without an actual foundational work... it's like if, instead of publishing stories, Lovecraft just threw caution to the wind and wrote "I was walking in the forest one day. I found a book. It was the Necronomicon." and then proceeded to give the reader 200 pages of intentionally opaque character-less occultist nonsense cribbed from Hermes Trismegistus (that actually sounds more enjoyable to read than this was).
It's like if Dictionary of the Khazars was just an actual dictionary.
It's like if House of Leaves was an actual architectural treatise (or, even better, just a blueprint rolled up inside a book cover).
It's like if... well it is ACTUALLY like White Noise because there is no subtlety or symbolism or allegory or (again) art to its reflection on theory - we're just supposed to be impressed that the subjects in question were brought up in the first place. The difference is that White Noise is a better read because there's an actual novel in there, and that's saying something because I hated White Noise and thought that the novel in there was crap.
I'm still grasping at straws about how to categorize this, which I suppose is the point, but if so then it was a point that no one needed to tackle. Theory fiction? Fictional theory? I am leaning now towards "fiction in theory" because
1) this book's whole M.O. is embedding fiction in a dense web of critical theory (or vice versa? fuck it, man, I don't know)
2) in theory this is a book-length work of fiction, a "novel" if you will, but in practice it's just... philosophy that no actual philosophers would take seriously so it was repackaged as a work of fiction.
I almost respect the fact that this book does kind of reflect Negarestani's approach to philosophy. I think it's trivial nonsense, but the man has clearly devoted himself to it and most people are buying it hook, line, and sinker. It's kind of impossible to know where the fiction ends and reality begins with this work: Kristen, the American artist of the introduction whose discovery of the metafictive Cyclonopedia sets the "plot" in motion, is a real person who actually wrote the introduction for Negarestani. Hamid Parsani, the Iranian academic author of the metafiction within the novel, is fictional, but there really is a "Hyperstition Laboratory" at the University of Warwick that Negarestani was a part of. Did the online discussions about the false author attributed to academics "X" and "Z" of said laboratory actually take place? Who knows.
I get that this is supposed to a "fun" introduction to "speculative realism" or whatever dumb philosophical school he is trying to reclaim Deleuze and Guattari for or an exploration of the usefulness of his mode of critical theory even when further divorced from reality but I don't have the patience for this kind of philosophy (especially anything that isn't strictly materialistic and ESPECIALLY this kind of ultra-insular neologism-mad self-satisfied baloney) and as a novel (or any kind of fiction) this fails spectacularly.
Rita: I like it!
Somewhere, in some beautiful alternate universe, some years ago the young Iranian student Reza Negarestani was denied entry to the graduate school of the University of Warwick and, crushed, never received any academic training in the field of philosophy. After wallowing in disappointment for a few years, he channeled his despondency into Cyclonopedia, a beautiful and despairing horror novel that densely wove together critical theory and the story of an American artist stranded in Istanbul to re-imagine the geopolitics of oil in the Middle East as an occult attack by ancient Lovecraftian horrors out to turn the entire Earth into a desert.
In our humdrum reality, though, Negarestani did go to grad school and did become impressed with how many ridiculous theoretical neologisms he could create and so just tricked someone into publishing his notes for said novel. That or he wrote an essay/article that was not accepted anywhere so he plopped it into a "frame story" (ie 5 pages and a few footnotes) and published it as a novel. I don't know. This would be a good joke if Negarestani (and apparently everyone else on goodreads?) didn't take it so seriously.
I mean, here are his philosophical interests:
"Subsurface Political Geography; Surface Globalization; Underground Facilities and Chthonic Militarization; Archeology as the Science of Military Education in 21st Century; Tora Bora and the Cappadocian Complex; Worm Factor; Middle Eastern Necropolises and Underground Nuclear Facilities; Petropolitics, Guerilla-states and Architecture of Holes; Videogame Rhetoric and Memory as the Models of Alien Incursion; Poromechanics of War."
This is what informs his fiction, which would be fine, except that I lied and there's no fiction being informed by anything here - that list, with some conjunctions and prepositions tossed in, is pretty much what this book is. Seriously, this is the most unreadably pretentious nonsense I have ever encountered and man, I can usually get into some embarrassingly pretentious nonsense. Not to mention the fact that it's also flatly and awkwardly written. There is no art to any of it.
LOOK AT THIS:
In both Drujite and Lovecraftian polytics of radical exteriority, omega-survival or strategic endurance is maintained by an excessive paranoia that cannot be distinguished from a schizophrenic delirium. For such a paranoia - saturated by parasitic survivalism and persistence in its own integrity - the course of activity coincides with that of schizo-singularities. Paranoia, in the Cthulhu Mythos and in Drujite-infested Zoroastriansim, manifests itself as a sophisticated hygiene-Complex associated with the demented Aryanistic obsession with purity and the structure of monotheism. This arch-sabotaged paranoia, in which the destination of purity overlaps with the emerging zone of the outside, is called schizotrategy. If, both for Lovecraft and the Aryans, purity must be safeguarded by an excessive paranoia, it is because only such paranoia and rigorous closure can attract the forces of the Outside and effectuate cosmic akienage in the form of radical openness - that is, being butchered and cracked open. Drujite cults fully developed this schizotrategic line through the fusion of Aryanistic purity with Zoroastrian monotheism. The Zoroastrian heresiarchs such as Akht soon discovered the immense potential of schyzotrategy for xeno-calls, subversion and sabotage. As a sorcerous line, schizotrategy opens the entire monotheistic culture to cosmodromic openness and its epidemic meshworks. As the nervous system of Lovecraftian strategic paranoia, openness is identified as 'being laid, cracked, butchered open' through a schizotrategic participation with the Outside. In terms of the xeno-call and schizitrategy, the non-localizable outside emerges as the xeno-chemical inside or the Insider.
... 'If openness, as the scimitar blade of the outside, seeks out manifestations of closure, then in the middle-eastern ethic it is imperative to assuage the external desire of the Outside by becoming what it hungers for the most' (H. Parsani)."
Schizotrategy. This is a book that uses the word "schizotrategy" seriously. This would work as a brief essay satirizing the absurdity of the field, but as a serious book-length meditation...
This is meta-fiction with the fiction removed, an exegesis without an actual foundational work... it's like if, instead of publishing stories, Lovecraft just threw caution to the wind and wrote "I was walking in the forest one day. I found a book. It was the Necronomicon." and then proceeded to give the reader 200 pages of intentionally opaque character-less occultist nonsense cribbed from Hermes Trismegistus (that actually sounds more enjoyable to read than this was).
It's like if Dictionary of the Khazars was just an actual dictionary.
It's like if House of Leaves was an actual architectural treatise (or, even better, just a blueprint rolled up inside a book cover).
It's like if... well it is ACTUALLY like White Noise because there is no subtlety or symbolism or allegory or (again) art to its reflection on theory - we're just supposed to be impressed that the subjects in question were brought up in the first place. The difference is that White Noise is a better read because there's an actual novel in there, and that's saying something because I hated White Noise and thought that the novel in there was crap.
I'm still grasping at straws about how to categorize this, which I suppose is the point, but if so then it was a point that no one needed to tackle. Theory fiction? Fictional theory? I am leaning now towards "fiction in theory" because
1) this book's whole M.O. is embedding fiction in a dense web of critical theory (or vice versa? fuck it, man, I don't know)
2) in theory this is a book-length work of fiction, a "novel" if you will, but in practice it's just... philosophy that no actual philosophers would take seriously so it was repackaged as a work of fiction.
I almost respect the fact that this book does kind of reflect Negarestani's approach to philosophy. I think it's trivial nonsense, but the man has clearly devoted himself to it and most people are buying it hook, line, and sinker. It's kind of impossible to know where the fiction ends and reality begins with this work: Kristen, the American artist of the introduction whose discovery of the metafictive Cyclonopedia sets the "plot" in motion, is a real person who actually wrote the introduction for Negarestani. Hamid Parsani, the Iranian academic author of the metafiction within the novel, is fictional, but there really is a "Hyperstition Laboratory" at the University of Warwick that Negarestani was a part of. Did the online discussions about the false author attributed to academics "X" and "Z" of said laboratory actually take place? Who knows.
I get that this is supposed to a "fun" introduction to "speculative realism" or whatever dumb philosophical school he is trying to reclaim Deleuze and Guattari for or an exploration of the usefulness of his mode of critical theory even when further divorced from reality but I don't have the patience for this kind of philosophy (especially anything that isn't strictly materialistic and ESPECIALLY this kind of ultra-insular neologism-mad self-satisfied baloney) and as a novel (or any kind of fiction) this fails spectacularly.
xrevacholiere's review against another edition
1.0
It's philosophy for people don't like philosophy. It's theory for people who don't like theory. It's fiction for people who don't like fiction, as a great man once said.
zoracious's review against another edition
2.0
Allow me to get on my soapbox for bit: A book's difficulty is not directly proportional to its brilliance. Some difficult books are pure drivel, and some simple looking books are pure genius. This particular book requires a lot of work, and a great deal of patience. For this, it is to be both admired and alternately thrown against a wall.
Part of the unusual nature of the book is the way that it is written. It starts out as a somewhat typical story would - meaning that it contains characters and the semblance of a plot. But once it gets those things out of the way (and discards them almost completely), it proceeds in somewhat essay/manifesto form. There are people mentioned in the rest of the book ('novel' is not the correct word here), but these people are secondary to the elements and ideas the book feels is more important. It takes a kind of HP Lovecraft / Deleuze and Guattari view of communication, and if you aren't familiar with either, then you should take a look at them. Danielewski's House of Leaves (which I was optimistic this would evoke, but it didn't) starts with the dedication page saying "This is not for you." Still, Danielewski can be said to be a bit kinder to the reader (while scaring the wits out of them) than Negarestani is here.
To get an idea of where the author is going, look up stuff on Hyperstition. The book is clever, and it challenges the way we are to read books and regard the world, ideas of capitalism, Islam, monotheism and our dependence on oil (for starters). For these things it should be lauded. But that can only take us so far. This book is oddly immersive in a way I've experienced with other books (many which regarded story as more central than declarative treatise), and its presentation of ideas on oil, the Middle East, desertification, etc. are fascinating - sometimes funny, other times creepy (in the good way). There is amusing word play and a very densely packed set of esoteric ideas. But to suggest that this book is wholly enjoyable to read would be misleading.
One of my friends called this book a "glorified essay that goes on ad infinitum." This book hinges on strict non-fiction that may or may not be fiction, (which I should note is not completely a criticism). I do not want to call this a gimmick, but it is excruciating. If the need to communicate such unique ideas is so important, why do it in a way that alienates readers or makes them work so hard to comprehend them? Those who would revert to the argument that this is a different way of thinking (one that would privilege the Middle East way of thinking) are definitely on the right track, except that this book is written in English and thus his intended audience comes under question (if it hadn't already).
I would suggest that this would best be enjoyed by someone familiar with Deleuze and Guattari, Lovecraft, Koontz (yes, Koontz is thrown in there), Žižek, philosophy (Western philosophy in general would be helpful but Middle Eastern and Iranian philosophy would be better), general knowledge of ideas in Islam and Wahhabism, Middle East politics and history, and the general ideas and background of Western monotheism, not to mention the history of conquest as it relates to Western versus Eastern epistemologies and economies. A little Indo-Iranian linguistic archeology would be nice too if you'd like. That would all help. Well, it wouldn't hurt, anyway. Not that you have to know all these to get the gist of what is going on, but it seems like a lot of the winks that Negarestani makes at the reader - if we are to assume he acknowledges him or her - are done at the assumption of a backbone knowledge of these and other things.
The marketing of the book emphasizes its story elements in a way that the book doesn't deliver on. If the back cover interests you I would suggest you pick a random page in the middle of the book and start reading to see what the book is really like before forming your impressions. It could have had great potential for something else that just isn't quite here.
Part of the unusual nature of the book is the way that it is written. It starts out as a somewhat typical story would - meaning that it contains characters and the semblance of a plot. But once it gets those things out of the way (and discards them almost completely), it proceeds in somewhat essay/manifesto form. There are people mentioned in the rest of the book ('novel' is not the correct word here), but these people are secondary to the elements and ideas the book feels is more important. It takes a kind of HP Lovecraft / Deleuze and Guattari view of communication, and if you aren't familiar with either, then you should take a look at them. Danielewski's House of Leaves (which I was optimistic this would evoke, but it didn't) starts with the dedication page saying "This is not for you." Still, Danielewski can be said to be a bit kinder to the reader (while scaring the wits out of them) than Negarestani is here.
To get an idea of where the author is going, look up stuff on Hyperstition. The book is clever, and it challenges the way we are to read books and regard the world, ideas of capitalism, Islam, monotheism and our dependence on oil (for starters). For these things it should be lauded. But that can only take us so far. This book is oddly immersive in a way I've experienced with other books (many which regarded story as more central than declarative treatise), and its presentation of ideas on oil, the Middle East, desertification, etc. are fascinating - sometimes funny, other times creepy (in the good way). There is amusing word play and a very densely packed set of esoteric ideas. But to suggest that this book is wholly enjoyable to read would be misleading.
One of my friends called this book a "glorified essay that goes on ad infinitum." This book hinges on strict non-fiction that may or may not be fiction, (which I should note is not completely a criticism). I do not want to call this a gimmick, but it is excruciating. If the need to communicate such unique ideas is so important, why do it in a way that alienates readers or makes them work so hard to comprehend them? Those who would revert to the argument that this is a different way of thinking (one that would privilege the Middle East way of thinking) are definitely on the right track, except that this book is written in English and thus his intended audience comes under question (if it hadn't already).
I would suggest that this would best be enjoyed by someone familiar with Deleuze and Guattari, Lovecraft, Koontz (yes, Koontz is thrown in there), Žižek, philosophy (Western philosophy in general would be helpful but Middle Eastern and Iranian philosophy would be better), general knowledge of ideas in Islam and Wahhabism, Middle East politics and history, and the general ideas and background of Western monotheism, not to mention the history of conquest as it relates to Western versus Eastern epistemologies and economies. A little Indo-Iranian linguistic archeology would be nice too if you'd like. That would all help. Well, it wouldn't hurt, anyway. Not that you have to know all these to get the gist of what is going on, but it seems like a lot of the winks that Negarestani makes at the reader - if we are to assume he acknowledges him or her - are done at the assumption of a backbone knowledge of these and other things.
The marketing of the book emphasizes its story elements in a way that the book doesn't deliver on. If the back cover interests you I would suggest you pick a random page in the middle of the book and start reading to see what the book is really like before forming your impressions. It could have had great potential for something else that just isn't quite here.
toddbert's review against another edition
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
ratthew86's review against another edition
1.0
I really did not like this. By the last 50 pages or so my eyes were so glazed over I might as well not have wasted the time reading it. I wish there were more footnotes from the introduction’s character— they were my life raft drifting across a sea of nonsense.
pattmayne's review against another edition
4.0
A monumental piece of horror-philosophy.
This is a strange and beautiful idea-story. It's about a rogue Iranian professor who goes off the deep end researching a complex, ancient demonology. The bulk of the book is pages and pages describing that ancient demonology, which is based on the idea that oil is alive and controls the Earth like a gooey demon. The book references real mythology, fictional demonologies from writers like Lovecraft, obscure philosophical texts, history, and modern social and political phenomena.
So it's mostly a fictional philosophy, but it sort of managed to convince some part of my mind that the idea was valid. By the end of it I almost believed that oil itself was just pushing mankind towards war and wasteland of its own conscious, evil volition.
I admit it was often a difficult read, being so rich in connections between obscure ideas and philosophies. But it was also a stimulating event to experience such a dramatic, ridiculous, well-constructed, mesmerizing picture of inhuman evil, expressed in such an original way. I still can't quite wrap my head around the book. It contains a lot of insight, too.
That being said, most people won't like this book LoL. There's not much storytelling. It's more like an essay and it's incredibly weird (but not at all random). Real fans of horror would like it. It's a completely unique work of art. Philosophy students should also appreciate it. And people who like weird stuff and strange ideas.
This is a strange and beautiful idea-story. It's about a rogue Iranian professor who goes off the deep end researching a complex, ancient demonology. The bulk of the book is pages and pages describing that ancient demonology, which is based on the idea that oil is alive and controls the Earth like a gooey demon. The book references real mythology, fictional demonologies from writers like Lovecraft, obscure philosophical texts, history, and modern social and political phenomena.
So it's mostly a fictional philosophy, but it sort of managed to convince some part of my mind that the idea was valid. By the end of it I almost believed that oil itself was just pushing mankind towards war and wasteland of its own conscious, evil volition.
I admit it was often a difficult read, being so rich in connections between obscure ideas and philosophies. But it was also a stimulating event to experience such a dramatic, ridiculous, well-constructed, mesmerizing picture of inhuman evil, expressed in such an original way. I still can't quite wrap my head around the book. It contains a lot of insight, too.
That being said, most people won't like this book LoL. There's not much storytelling. It's more like an essay and it's incredibly weird (but not at all random). Real fans of horror would like it. It's a completely unique work of art. Philosophy students should also appreciate it. And people who like weird stuff and strange ideas.
steve_brinson's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
To paraphrase Brian David Gilbert, "My first reaction was 'wow'. This is an incredible amount of work. To write a full work of academic philosophy and a Lovecraftian novel about the Middle East at the same time is a level of commitment that is genuinely impressive. My second reaction was, 'what the fuck? Hey, Reza Negarestani? What the fuck?'"