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In a small Midwestern town, two Asian American boys bond over their outcast status and a mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternative or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes ponder modern society during their time off. Between black-ops missions and rescuing hostages, they swap stories of artistic malaise and muse on the seemingly inescapable grip of market economics.
Gleefully toying with the conventions of the novel, Dear Cyborgs weaves together the story of a friendship's dissolution with a provocative and timely meditation on protest. Through a series of linked monologues, a lively cast of characters explores narratives of resistance - protest art, eco-terrorists, Occupy squatters, pyromaniacal militants - and the extent to which any of these can truly withstand and influence the cold demands of contemporary capitalism. All the while, a mysterious cybernetic book of clairvoyance beckons, and trusted allies start to disappear.
Entwining comic-book villains with cultural critiques, Eugene Lim's Dear Cyborgs is a fleet-footed literary exploration of power, friendship, and creativity. Ambitious and knowing, it combines detective pulps, subversive philosophy, and Hollywood chase scenes, unfolding like the composites and revelations of a dream.
"Starred Review. The core relationships, whether they're between estranged childhood friends or opinionated superhumans, are real and profoundly moving." - Publishers Weekly
"A colorful meditation on friendship and creation nested within a fictional universe." - Kirkus
"Dear Cyborgs ... sings the tune of language itself, music that Gertrude Stein and Gordon Lish could get behind, wherein the sentence is less a part than a whole unto itself." - Virginia Quarterly Review
"Eugene Lim's Dear Cyborgs is a mad badass fan letter to comicdom and a chastening reminder of how America's greatest fantasy doesn't involve superheroes with superpowers but the prospect of a fair and honest political life. Go read it in the streets." - Joshua Cohen, author of Book of Numbers
"Eugene Lim's Dear Cyborgs is a secret tunnel fresh with cool, strange storms. What is it to be super? What is it to be beyond? Dear Cyborgs is ripe with mysteries, heroes, even heartache." - Samantha Hunt, author of Mr. Splitfoot
"Eugene Lim tells his sly superhero tales in a kind of hard-boiled deadpan - a voice at once incongruously comic and playfully soulful. Beneath the dry wit there's an ache of loneliness, an echo of every comic-book reader's yearning for the camaraderie of the super team, the intimate enmity of the nemesis." - Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes
This information about Dear Cyborgs was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eugene Lim is the author of Fog & Car and The Strangers. His writing has appeared in Fence, the Denver Quarterly, Little Star, Dazed, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. He is the founder and managing editor of Ellipsis Press and works as a librarian in a high school. He lives in Queens, New York.
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