Everything Abridged

Dayle Dennard Dayle

Description

For readers of David Wong, Paul Beatty, and George Saunders, an electrifying and wholly original collection of satirical stories that create a bitingly funny portrait of American racism, capitalism, and politicsFramed as a reference work of humorous "entries" that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country's foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible. A copywriter on a space colony advertises a weapon with the potential to destroy his home during an intergalactic war. These and other linked stories, many of which feature a speculative bent-about being Black in America, law enforcement practices in an android society, Olympic speed walking, consumerism, nuclear war, and more-are interspersed with hilarious, one-line definitions for words ranging from abolition to zygote, creating a sharply humorous portrait of American inequality. With his singular wit, sharp prose, and shrewd observations, Dennard Dayle captures the struggles his characters face to keep hold of their sanity in a society collapsing into chaos and absurdity.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 24 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647006365
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copyright 2022 Dennard Dayle
Cover 2022 Abrams
Published in 2022 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Recent Activity was first published in Matchbook in 2016.
Comments was first published in McSweeney s Internet Tendency in 2018.
Hell in an Inkwell was first published in No. 2 Literary Mag in 2019.
Question and Urban Market were first published in Points in Case in 2019.
Own Goal was first published in Clarkesworld in 2020.
Liberty Points was previously published in the New Book Bay Science Fiction contest.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947024
ISBN: 978-1-4197-6096-9
eISBN: 978-1-64700-636-5
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [e-mail] or the address below.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
For Eugeny Higgins.
Contents
A
Annotations
Apex Competitor
B
Bipolar Tendencies
C
Comments
D
Death Comedy Jam
E
F
Free Panels
G
H
Hell in an Inkwell
I
J
K
L
Liberty Points
M
N
No One Gets Shot
O
Own Goal
P
Post-Atomic Stress
Q
Question
R
Recent Activity
S
Space Glaive
T
U
Urban Market, The
V
W
Welcome
X
Y
Z
Zen in the Dark Enlightenment
What s Happening?
If you re alive today, you re either confused or too deluded to be confused. Everything Abridged is the cure. A comprehensive guide to what the world is, was, and will be. My handmade gift to everyone navigating the Anthropocene. If you can t define Anthropocene, you re welcome.
Like any proper reference, it s been researched, written, and reviewed by a leading expert. To complement current attention spans, most entries have been kept short. Longer entries indicate areas of particular interest. They include letters, records, histories, and hallucinations for your education. While technically untrue, they reflect reality.
Get ready to change. You might absorb Everything Abridged in one linear burst or slowly pick through random sections. Either way, you ll be marked as a leader by your community and intelligence agencies. The daily bombardment of information will start to make sense, and you ll gain a working definition of Anthropocene. You ll be more than you were.
All you need to know is that this is all you need to know. Good luck.
Best,
Dennard Dayle, Expertise Specialist
A
abolition: An early invasion of property rights by left-wing extremists.
advertising: 1. A combination of art and business. Specifically, the profit of art and creativity of business.
2. The easiest way for a writer to live with a semblance of comfort and dignity.
3. When a talking beach ball asks you to buy insurance.
Africa: Home to enduring, storied, and diverse natural resources.
age: Decline in thought, vigor, and ability in exchange for wealth and authority. The wealth and authority are not guaranteed.
agnosticism: Uncertainty about your willingness to argue on holidays.
Alexander the Great: The tone-setter for violent sociopathy s role in history.
aliens: 1. Fungi found on a rock orbiting Alpha Centauri.
2. Talking bugs currently engaged in their version of the Napoleonic Wars.
3. Rubber suits used to haze new CIA recruits.
4. Your future masters.
alimony: Love s hangover.
allegory: Literary passive-aggression.
American Dream, the: An industry-defining ad campaign by Horatio Alger.
Americas, the: An exciting Early Modern opportunity for everyone but the residents.
analysis: The journey back to your established opinion.
anarchism: A brick-based martial art.
Author s note: I tried joining a local group, but the guy in charge was the worst .
anger: Overexposure to education, current events, family, romance, unemployment, employment, or a neighbor s taste in music.
anime: The ongoing memoirs of Karl Ove Anime, a high school sophomore with a unique power.
Annotations
I. Admiral Titania Largo opened every victory speech with this sitcom-grade lemon of a joke. While her grasp of field tactics and statecraft are undeniable, the same cannot be said of comedy. A
A. Nonetheless, survivors of the battle likely appreciated it.
II. This is slightly misleading. Three out of every five drafted citizens died. Titania s statistic only references mech pilots, who enjoyed a gentler 50 percent survival rate.
III. At this point, the admiral paused to allow applause to die down. Few Free Dominion factions had more enthusiasm for the end of the Senate than the Senate itself.
IV. Widely debunked.
V. The Final War refers to World War III, reflecting a postwar optimism that would be violently dispelled over the next fifty years.
VI. ACT is shorthand for anti-civilian tactics, a field developed and perfected by the admiral. A
A. Some scholars, including myself, credit ACT with the overall decline in terrorism in the twenty-second century. Largo s innovations rendered terror obsolete.
VII. Later retracted. Sadly, many well-read people still believe this, thanks to the populist and inflammatory hackwork of C. T. Thompson. There was, just to be clear, no neo-Jihadist android cartel behind the Houston firebombing.
VIII. Video edition viewers might note that this is the last speech with Titania s once-signature stutter. C. T. Thompson famously wrote: The crown may be heavy, but power is a palliative. A
A. Thompson is an imbecile. As I wrote in Rise of the Valkyrie , Admiral Largo stopped stuttering two days after the passing of Fleet Admiral Arnold Baldur, her only serious rival for First Citizen. Titania was left with no reason to feign weakness and adjusted accordingly.
IX. A poor way to die.
X. A not-so-subtle reference to losses incurred during Baldur s Charge. Fleet Admiral Baldur believed the Divine Alliance would be unwilling to use atomic weaponry within their own cities. A A platoon of Justiciar B mechs were lost in the conflagration.
A. A similarly pigheaded attitude is common among editors of academic journals, who consider a few simple explanations a self-indulgent waste of the reader s time and yours. I d like to thank the Dominion Archives for showing more respect for the spirit of intellectual endeavor.
B. The first mech produced by the Free Dominion Navy. Considerably less refined than later models, the Justiciar required two pilots, used a nonatomic power core, and had a surprising dearth of chemical weapons. The unit compensated for these flaws with enough armored mass to crush a two-story refugee shelter under a single foot.
XI. There were no survivors.
XII. There were no survivors.
XIII. There were three survivors.
XIV. The model for the memorial statue was Sergeant Roderick Liao, the only pilot to survive a direct hit from an orbital rail rifle. A From the waist up, at least: the sergeant s lower half was permanently fused to his mech. His spouse claimed that he smiled more often than you d expect.
A. Sadly, the most credible book on this subject is Big Guns and Big Mechs: Rough Riders of the Final War by C. T. Thompson. It s thorough work, if one is willing to overlook the prosaic style, rampant grammatical errors, and complete absence of intellectual value.
XV. A reference to the Die on Your Feet recruitment poster, which featured a portrait view of the admiral. A,B Titania was chosen for her subtly judgmental glare, which seemed to follow the viewer long after they d turned away.
A. This remains the iconic image of Titania Largo s early career: a wiry woman in a winter infantry jacket, standing in the shadow of a burning city. A popular apocryphal story claims she responded to a photographer s request to cover her braids by having him beaten and imprisoned. 1
1. This is, of course, nonsense. He was merely beaten.
B. Shortly before his accident, Fleet Admiral Baldur expressed regret for Putting that witch s face on every street sign in the country.
XVI. Deliberate misquote. V. F. Ali referred to mid-war famines as the wages of hubris, not the wrath of heaven.
XVII. The less said about the state of North Africa in the aftermath of the war, the better. A
A. As the center of Divine Alliance mech production, North African cities were natural targets for strikes 1 by Dominion pilots. In this context, ACT thrived. To quote the Admiral: Without noncombatants to supply, support, and inspire an army, there is no army. 2
1. My grandfather was the lead engineer behind the 87-VV Widowmaker, the anti-civilian mech seen in most films about the period. He reminded us of this during every phone call, visit, family reunion, and wedding reception. a We did not get along.
a) During my wedding, he entertained himself with an obsolete cell phone game about arranging colorful gems. He saw no issue with playing at full volume, an incident I consider solid proof that people now live for far too long.
2. Sampled from Titania s Christmas Day address, found later in the volume.
XVIII. Despite extensive training, Divine Alliance guerrillas were unpaid, underequipped, and casually sacrificed for minor strategic gains. Much like the contemporary adjunct professor.
XIX. A war crime was a twenty-first-century neologism for anti-civilian tactics.
XX. Another reference to a famous soldier. Much like Sergeant Liao, Private Jose Farrell fell into narcotics after the war. However, enthusiastic drug abuse propelled his life instead of truncating it. Stimulants fueled Farrell s journey through a post-gonzo journalistic career in which he covered traumatized veterans, bureaucratic corruption, and the cities rendered uninhabita