The Pains: Mind Over Matter: Volume Black

Say you’re the Savior, Fred Christ. Would you want your frozen head to be reanimated in 1984? The world is going all to hell. Wars loom. Earthquakes strike with increasing regularity; weather patterns are awry; birds are in the water, fish in the air. Old ways wither; old languages are lost as the memories of their last surviving speakers dissolve like cobwebs. Something rotten this way comes. Governments collapse around the globe, leaving only the Party to rule over all. In a prison cell, a madman spins theories of the mind, conjuring his own freedom. In cars and bars and shopping malls, proles obediently obey the insipid pronouncements of Big Brother, Ronald Reagan, and Oliver North that emanate from the irony machine they call the telescreen. In a subzero laboratory, a scientist stares at an imprisoned god. And in a lonely bare room in a vast and nearly empty monastery, a young novice studies and prays and contemplates the idea of simple goodness, trying to comprehend chaos. For which his only reward will be the pure torment of The Pains In a world that is part Orwell, part Cheney, and part who knows what, a holy man tries to find a way to give meaning to his suffering, and perhaps thereby save us all. With The Pains, John Damien Sundman, an eigenvector of the author of Acts of the Apostles and the editor of Cheap Complex Devices, has created his most disturbing and most hopeful vision yet. Cheeseburger Brown, the creator of Simon of Space brings this universe to life with twelve vivid illustrations. In a deranged world, what will save us: science or faith? Open your mind and — Fred willing — you will find release from your own pains within these pages.

About the Author

John Damien Sundman is an eigenvector of the author of Acts of the Apostles the editor of Cheap Complex Devices. Acts of the Apostles, the underground cult sensation about nanomachines, neurobiology, Gulf War Syndrome and a Silicon Valley messiah, has been called the ultimate hacker book. Cheap Complex Devices, a report from the Society for Analytical Engines about the inaugural Hofstadter Prize for Machine-written Narrative, is the state of the art in post-human fiction. Sundman lives in Massachusetts with his longsuffering wife Betty. He really knows absolutely nothing about anything whatsoever. But he's a nice guy and his stories are intriguing and amusing, not to mention well written and reasonably priced!

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