The Billionth Monkey

by Richard Kaczynski

It's like a meme come true... Professor Niels Belanger is having the week from hell. The chair of his department has quit. The cute waitress at Cafe du Monde won't speak to him. And now one of his students is trying to kill him. Belanger has stumbled into the deadly fantasy world of Nicholas Young, a partying frat boy whose unhealthy obsession with acting out urban legends has gone just a teensy bit over to the dark side. Everything changes when Belanger encounters the most unusual woman he has ever a wildly nonconformist goth who technically shouldn't exist. Yet the fact that she does forces him to accept that something much bigger and stranger is warping the shopworn fabric of reality. But are the two of them enough to stop a Millennial under-achiever from impossibly destroying the world?"

Genres: Fiction

Hardcover

First published June 18, 2015

About the author

Richard Kaczynski is an American writer, musician, research scientist, and lecturer in the fields of social psychology, metaphysical beliefs and new religious movements. He is known for his biography Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (North Atlantic Books, 2010), acclaimed by the Times Literary Supplement as "the major biography to date" of the Edwardian enfant terrible, and regarded by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten as the best biography of Crowley.

He has lectured internationally since 1990, and over the years his writing has appeared in magazines ranging from High Times to the Lovecraftian role-playing journal Different Worlds. He has also appeared on television in the documentaries Secrets of the Occult and Aleister Crowley: The Beast 666.

Kaczynski has also played keyboards for the progressive rock bands House of Usher, Page, and Celestial Serenity.

Dr. Kaczynski earned his Ph.D. in social psychology, with a minor in measurement and statistics, in 1993 with a dissertation on metaphysical beliefs and experiences among occult practitioners in New Religious Movements. He works professionally as a research scientist and biostatistician on studies ranging from clinical trials of psychiatric medications to program evaluation of compensated work therapy.

Reviews

[Dian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super fun, delightfully quirky and entertaining read. It is hard to write something new and, while this reminded me of other works, it felt very original to me.

[Emily Auger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this one from start to finish. It's like every book you've ever read and like no book you've ever read. You can decide if the movies (and monkeys) are worth mentioning after you've read it. :-)

[John Banner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable romp through the byways of what some might like to think possible.

[Vincent Piazza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun fact: All writers are crazy, to some degree. There is a reason for it -- actually making it through a novel almost requires it. If you love to read, then you're continually benefiting from other people's craziness. And by this standard you would think Mr. Kaczynski is quite insane (I did at first), but in a delightful, Slapstick 0 to 80 Mph sort of way. For someone born and breed from the city of New Orleans, this book gives some of the best descriptions of the city and it's likes' and dislikes' by a non-native that I've read in quite sometime. Filled with nerd humor, dead bodies, and more Pop culture references then you can shake a microwaved kitten at, It strains my imagination to the breaking point to even attempt to tell you what this book is about without ruining it for you.Let me just put it this way, say you happen to live in a world where every urban Legend your grandma's, boyfriends, ex-roommate's uncle told you about slowly became real and tried to kill you. What would you do? Mr. Kaczynski gives us a few ideas, along with sight gags in print, occult facts mixed with the Snarky Observations of the main Protagonist's "companion" , Dr.Who style, AND a Hamlet scene comic book at the end. Why? I can't tell you that! Read the book and see, I promise you dear reader, you will not be disappointed.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A funny story in which various urban legends start to come true.