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The Isolated Clay
W. Harry Olstein, an insecure computer science teacher distraught over his wife's leaving, is determined to find out what makes successful people tick. He begins his research with personality tests surreptitiously administered to his ex-wife's lover as well as to his students, eventually stalking his subjects with home-built electronic surveillance devices.
Blending speculative fiction with philosophy and a hearty dose of personality theory, the story bleeds neurosis from every pore. It's even narrated by Olstein's therapist.
Blending speculative fiction with philosophy and a hearty dose of personality theory, the story bleeds neurosis from every pore. It's even narrated by Olstein's therapist.
63 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 17, 2012
2 people want to read
About the author
Ruji Chapnik
7 books7 followersRuji Chapnik is a posthumanoid author, artist, and creator of miscellanea, including but not limited to:
•the depressed, drug-addled cartoon character Don Depresso
•experimental/artsy/comedy videos
•SadOS, an open-source operating system based on Arch Linux
•The Meta-Podcast, a no-budget podcast featuring interviews with sex workers, drug-doers, Linux hax0rz, and various other wayward twenty-somethings
•the Social Orientation Inventory personality test
•the 3D Spectral Cluster(fuck) Personality Theory (in progress)
Ruji Chapnik exists in The Uncanny Valley between Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California.
•the depressed, drug-addled cartoon character Don Depresso
•experimental/artsy/comedy videos
•SadOS, an open-source operating system based on Arch Linux
•The Meta-Podcast, a no-budget podcast featuring interviews with sex workers, drug-doers, Linux hax0rz, and various other wayward twenty-somethings
•the Social Orientation Inventory personality test
•the 3D Spectral Cluster(fuck) Personality Theory (in progress)
Ruji Chapnik exists in The Uncanny Valley between Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, California.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 5, 2013
I like short books, some times, and you don't really find that many of them out there. This is a 55-page novella and all I knew when I started reading it was that there was a computer on the cover, and that seemed appealing.
Turns out the book is an amazing analysis of the way we as humans deal with loss, frustration, and insecurity. The story starts out simple; the main character's wife leaves him. Anyone who has ever experienced that sort of loss can identify with that, so it's a painful but familiar entry point.
But the tale takes the helplessness and desperation and the reaction to that event down a very speculative-fictiony path, and in a way that feels completely natural. In fact, Chapnik's straight-forward and clinical narration tricks us into thinking that the far-out technology that gets invented in the latter half of the book is normal and believable. It's modern technology, and we don't question that in real life, so we don't question it in this book. Why shouldn't we be able to apply things like meta-data filtering and random number generators to real life situations? It's all perfectly normal.
Except, it isn't. It's totally abnormal, and it's a fantasy. And it won't seem out of place to you because we live in a "normal" world any more.
One of my new favourite books.
Turns out the book is an amazing analysis of the way we as humans deal with loss, frustration, and insecurity. The story starts out simple; the main character's wife leaves him. Anyone who has ever experienced that sort of loss can identify with that, so it's a painful but familiar entry point.
But the tale takes the helplessness and desperation and the reaction to that event down a very speculative-fictiony path, and in a way that feels completely natural. In fact, Chapnik's straight-forward and clinical narration tricks us into thinking that the far-out technology that gets invented in the latter half of the book is normal and believable. It's modern technology, and we don't question that in real life, so we don't question it in this book. Why shouldn't we be able to apply things like meta-data filtering and random number generators to real life situations? It's all perfectly normal.
Except, it isn't. It's totally abnormal, and it's a fantasy. And it won't seem out of place to you because we live in a "normal" world any more.
One of my new favourite books.
Displaying 1 of 1 review