The Fictionalizer

Michael Schulze

Description

Enter the mad, mysterious, and unreliable world of the Fictionalizer! Waldo Stanton, a high-technology executive, takes a frightening but revelatory journey from Manhattan to Los Angeles in the last two months of 1999. Waldo suffers from paranoid schizophrenic psychosis, and his condition has been worsened by his psychiatrist, who has his own strange agenda.

Following some life-changing and traumatizing incidents, Waldo heads west to confront the person he suspects is responsible: Richard Light, CEO of a shadowy, Los Angeles-based corporate empire that controls his company.

Light seeks to perfect a drug called the Fictionalizer, which could purportedly modify reality itself. As Waldo travels cross country, he invades several of Light's heavily guarded office buildings to uncover information about the development effort.

But as the narrative progresses, questions arise: How much of this journey is "fact," how much "fiction"? Who is who in the world of Waldo's multiple personalities? Will Waldo find Light? Will the Fictionalizer work? If so, what does Light intend to do with it?

And what will happen then?

Praise for Love Song - Michael Schulze's previous novel (available on Kindle):

"To read Love Song, a work twenty years in the creation, an audacious and uncompromising descent into the American fascination with violence and the contemporary pornography of horror, is to be abruptly within the terrifying/intriguing sphere of brutal novelty, something 'deep, formless, and profoundly dangerous.' It plays with genres - the horror story, the play-within-a-play, the psychosexual mystery-thriller - in streams of language that test the weight-bearing capacity of the printed page . . . ."

-from the Review of Contemporary Fiction, October 2003

"As well as the stylistic qualities, I like the attitude of this book. Not the puling whine of the postmodernist, the cringing minimalist – but good muscular revulsion, a cadenced roar against the nastiness of humanity ...."

-Laura Argiri, author of The God in Flight

Customer reviews:

"You'd need bionic nerves to take on this novel. Young bionic nerves. The book is drenched in sex and violence. And monsters. And paranoia. It made me feel titillated, repelled, baffled, and indicted all at the same time.

Still, the narrative, at least at the beginning, barrels like a semi rolling downhill, and even at the end, when the text begins to break down into seemingly random words and letters, the momentum holds. How the author does that, I don't know. The observations are acute; the language has a sort of vibrating flatness, like an obscene joke being told with a face so straight you could roll a marble across it ...."

-Sue Cologgi

"Love Song is a highly creative, multidimensional effort combining a detective story, subconscious undertones, and a myriad of characters in a fantasy that's surprisingly readable. This is the book Stephen King might write if he were willing to take the time... it's a fascinating tour de force that works on many levels ...."

-Doug Grant

Sujets

• Science Fiction
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 18 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456638443
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE FICTIONALIZER
 
A NOVEL
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Michael Schulze
Copyright © 2021–2023 by Michael Schulze.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mechanical or electronic means without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
 
Cover design by Michael Thoresen and Gary Koepke.
 
Cover image by Scy Heidekamp of Seyhan Lee.
 
Fifth edition, revised, June 2023

The writing of this novel was partly supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and ITT (through the Fulbright program). All characters and events in the book are fictionalized.
 
Published by eBookIt,
[e-mail]
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-3847-4 (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-3908-2 (Hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-3844-3 (Ebook)
Praise for Love Song
 
Michael Schulze’s previous novel (available on Kindle):
 
“T o read Love Song , a work twenty years in the creation, an audacious and uncompromising descent into the American fascination with violence and the contemporary pornography of horror, is to be abruptly within the terrifying/intriguing sphere of brutal novelty, something ‘deep, formless, and profoundly dangerous.’ It plays with genres — the horror story, the play-within-a-play, the psychosexual mystery-thriller — in streams of language that test the weight-bearing capacity of the printed page
. . . .”
 
- Joseph Dewey , from the Review of Contemporary Fiction , October 2003
 
“A s well as the stylistic qualities, I like the attitude of this book. Not the puling whine of the postmodernist, the cringing minimalist — but good muscular revulsion, a cadenced roar against the nastiness of humanity ….”
 
- Laura Argiri , author of The God in Flight and Guilty Parties
 
Customer reviews:
 
“Y ou’d need bionic nerves to take on this novel. Young bionic nerves. The book is drenched in sex and violence. And monsters. And paranoia. It made me feel titillated, repelled, baffled, and indicted all at the same time.
 
“Still, the narrative, at least at the beginning, barrels like a semi rolling downhill, and even at the end, when the text begins to break down into seemingly random words and letters, the momentum holds. How the author does that, I don’t know. The observations are acute; the language has a sort of vibrating flatness, like an obscene joke being told with a face so straight you could roll a marble across it ….”
 
-Sue Cologgi
 
“ L ove Song is a highly creative, multidimensional effort combining a detective story, subconscious undertones, and a myriad of characters in a fantasy that’s surprisingly readable. This is the book Stephen King might write if he were willing to take the time …. It’s a fascinating tour de force that works on many levels ….”
 
-Doug Grant
 
 
 
 
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.
 
-Charles Bukowski
 
Editor ’ s Note
 
This book is a labor of love. It had to be, because every step of its creation was a screaming nightmare.
 
I write this to explain the odd structure of this narrative. I ’ ve divided it into four parts. The first three alternate between first-person and third-person accounts. The passages are based on parts of a journal kept by Waldo Stanton, a high-technology executive in New York City in the pre-Angelic year 1999. The journal was retrieved from the office of Alpha Security Systems chief James Gate and given to me by Rebirth team members.
 
Why didn ’ t I just clean up the journal and have it published? Because at the time he was writing, Mr. Stanton was under the influence of a very strong sedative and hypnotic called Duadine. He was typing on an advanced, classified palmtop PC with a small onscreen keyboard. In addition, he frequently made entries under severe duress. The results are evident in his writing, which for the most part is garbled, incoherent and often incomprehensible.
 
I ’ ve done what I can. When journal entries could be mostly understood, I edited them for typos, grammar and style. When entries were insufficient, I relied on the memories of participants in the story to help me write third-person passages. Part IV of this book took place after Mr. Stanton had stopped writing, so it’s entirely in third person.
 
The perceptive reader may notice that the first-person and third-person passages in Parts I-III alternate in a regular pattern. For the most part this is coincidence. But I admit that I took some liberties to reinforce the design, for aesthetic and thematic reasons (please see Dr. Artak Molotov ’ s comments in this regard). This approach also allowed me to insert some explanatory sections, such as the back story of Amutha Devidutta.
 
As for the switches between present tense and past tense, I did this for the standard editorial reason—to speed up or slow down the action. Or sometimes because I felt like it.
 
Why did I undertake this effort? Because I was asked to do so by the Federation Emperor himself. He granted me full use of the archives of the Institute for Pre-Angelic Studies, which funded this project throughout its troubled genesis. I thank the institute ’ s staff for their unstinting and generous support.
 
After three long years of labor on this literary jumble, I must admit that I ’ ve lost track of where Waldo Stanton ends and I begin. All I can say is that I leave the rest up to Fate—or whatever constitutes Fate these days.
 
-Michael Schulze
Years 1-3
Bora Bora Interdimensional Federation
Contents
 
I. JOEY
II. MOLOTOV
III. JANE1
IV. LIGHT