Wave of Mutilation

Online Reviews

Vanessa Wu, Intense Sensations Online
Five Stars
Surreal Sex for Intellectuals
Wave of Mutilation: It’s probably wrong to call this a science fiction book. It’s probably better categorised as literary philosophy.

Trent Walters, SFSite
Wave of Mutilation
Douglas Lain is a writer’s writer, a thinker’s writer…For those who like to be at the forefront of what’s truly unique about the field [of fantasy writing], they will want to grab this book. If Wave of Mutilation falls into the laps of enough readers, this may help put Lain on more people’s maps.

The universe has a hole in it and reality is leaking out. Who knew it would be this much fun? Doug Lain’s Wave of Mutilation is the story of Christian and Samantha; a story that generates itself as it devours itself. Its characters and surreal scenes are rendered with an engaging style and seem to have truths to tell us about relationships, politics, sex, the history of furniture. At the same time, they convince us they are insubstantial, errant, nothing but the illusion of the world. Terrific writing, good laughs, and the flawless execution of a fictional tightrope walk between “reality” and nothing. Wonderfully original! -Jeffrey Ford, author of The Physiogonomy

In Wave of Mutilation, you will find echoes and shadings of J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Tim Powers and Walker Percy (which is stepping in some high cotton).  Lain shares an obsessive fascination with the interface between technology and psychology, and has a keen eye for sharp juxtapositions (as in the contrast between eroticism and hygiene).  But what I admire especially is his grasp of the subtle and pervasive mood of paranoia and melancholy that haunts our digitalized era—an elusive sense of spiritual desolation complicated by the ghostly infestation of forces and presences we can never really understand.  An intellect and a questioner of literary forms, Lain is also a husbanding, fathering advocate for the Everyman in us all.  The result is curiously human and intimate—down to earth, even as the universe falls apart in our hands. -Kris Saknussemm, author of Zanesville and Enigmatic Pilot

Wave of Mutilation is brilliant: a Barthesian examination of structure, a reverse Russian nesting doll of increasing surreality and emotion. To find oneself alternately pondering the metafictional importance of a Sesame Street book and choking back the tears induced by a surprisingly human drama is a testament to Lain’s writing. I loved every sentence, every word. -J. David Osborne, author of By the Time We Leave Here, We’ll Be Friends.

Wave of Mutilation is about what everything means. It’s what you get when the stuff in your head comes out to play — the love of your life floating in a motel swimming pool, unreality leaking from the world, block parties of identity destruction, and interstitial spaces where you might spot Donald from Mathmagic Land motioning you into a strange place between now and a distant childhood that might not even be yours. Lain’s writing is sharp and surprising. You’ll have a good time. – Ray Vukcevich, author of Meet Me in the Moon Room

Go ahead, read WAVE OF MUTILATION–if you dare. Only, be warned: the space between fingers and page will vanish, text and meta-text sixty-nine, and (like the protagonists) you’ll find yourself on both sides of your eyeballs. True, Douglas Lain examines the higher resonances of architecture and politics, the lawn chair, googie design, the Gore-Bush Florida vote count kafuffle, all linked, we discover, to a leakage of reality consequent to a nuclear accident, but this book is really an epistemological inquiry into the bases of everyday perception, a wacky yarn pushing at the borders of science fiction like acne, eczema, elephantiasis, or _anuttara samyak sambodhi._ It’s a mutation, folks, another species of fiction. – Elliot Fintushel, author of Breakfast with the Ones You Love

Wave of Mutilation is incredible. I loved it. A Proust-like intellectual obsessive-compulsive display. There is a historical moment, and a set of archetypal characters, that eternally recur in Lain’s writings with Nietszchean regularity. This is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s one of the things that sets Lain apart. Lain is a fantasy writer who has a dearly beloved fantasy world and who explores it in obsessive detail, but his fantasy world is his own mind. He’s painting a hyperrealist portrait of the inside of his own head using concise language to make real all the stuff that usually feels uncomfortably amorphous. -MK Hobson, author of  The Native Star

Wave of Mutilation is classic Doug Lain, dancing about architecture on undercurrents of love, despair and politics. He yokes magic realism and science fiction in harness together to instantiate a trenchant cultural critique that is at once almost maddeningly oblique and a bellwether call to arms stretching from Florida to Oregon to the end of the world. Highly recommended for long-time Lain fans and first time readers alike. -Jay Lake, author of Escapement

Doug Lain’s writing is as close as you’ll ever get to throwing your brain into an industrial tumble-dryer. In Wave of Mutilation, he once again takes an unflinching look at all the things that most of us would rather hide from… and he does it so stylishly and in such an intriguing fashion that even though we might never be the same again, we rather want to thank him. -AM Dellamonica, author of Indigo Springs

Wave of Mutilation is poignantly recursive. Its metafiction disassembles ideas about readership and plot with familiar cultural simulacra and wormholed textual experimentation. A very welcome welcome break from the cult of linear narrative. -Darin Bardley, author of Noise