| From The Publisher* | The Millions ' most anticipated books of 2017 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 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. " |
| Review Quote* | Two radically different story lines - one involving a short-lived friendship between two Asian-American boys in the Midwest, the other an ongoing philosophical debate amongst a team of superheroes - are cleverly tied together in this short, sly, unorthodox novel . . . The core relationships, whether they're between estranged childhood friends or opinionated superhumans, are real and profoundly moving." - Publishers Weekly, starred review " 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." - Josh Cook, Virginia Quarterly Review "One of the smartest, strangest books I've read. This is a document of a side of the Midwest that goes largely uncelebrated: the population of tech-savvy, art-forward, and too often marginalized voices that shape the region's identity from the edges. Dear Cyborgs is brilliant in its blending of academic investigation and pop-culture tropes, and structurally invigorating from start to finish. I'm not quite sure what to call it, other than a total blast." - Robert Martin, Midwest Independent Booksellers Association "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 "[An] entertaining reflection on art, resistance, heroes, and villains . . . eerily reflective of our fractured times, darting from subject to subject with the speed of a mouse click. A colorful meditation on friendship and creation nested within a fictional universe." - Kirkus Reviews "Eugene Lim is amazing because he's really adventurous with form and style … It's so hard to break apart fiction and do something really unusual with it, and to do it so gracefully." - Dennis Cooper Praise for The Strangers : "Beautifully written, so precise and accurate to real life." - Lydia Davis "Beautiful, original, with delicious surprises lurking at the heart of sentences, of events, of all the engines of communication." - Harry Mathews Praise for Fog and Car : "In this astonishing, assured first novel Eugene Lim intertwines elegant poetics with a fantastic plot, rife with love, mystery, malaise, and the supernatural. His gift for ingenious, startling permutations of language and plot make for a memorable, mesmerizing read. It was hard for me to put Fog and Car down; harder for me to stop thinking about." - Lynn Crawford "In this debut novel . . . Eugene Lim doesn't as much collect and catalogue the fragments of lives shared, as artfully piece them into a puzzle reflective of players whose moves were induced by seemingly inconsequent forces . . . [A] phenomenal ability to nestle revelatory gems in the corners of his muscular text." - Erin McKnight, Bookslut " |
| Biographical Note | 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. |
