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Plastic Soul
The year is 2043. Wealthy elites are paying vast sums to have clones made of themselves, and Chrysalis Institute is happy to meet the demand.
But if a companion isn’t what you seek, the Institute offers other boutique services to help the old look young again, for a price…
Propelled by James Nulick’s lyrically innovative approach to slipstream fiction, Plastic Soul presents an incisive yet darkly comic vision of an irreversibly digitized future in which meaning has been traded for vanity. It is a future not far adrift from the world we presently inhabit—a future that haunts our present.
But if a companion isn’t what you seek, the Institute offers other boutique services to help the old look young again, for a price…
Propelled by James Nulick’s lyrically innovative approach to slipstream fiction, Plastic Soul presents an incisive yet darkly comic vision of an irreversibly digitized future in which meaning has been traded for vanity. It is a future not far adrift from the world we presently inhabit—a future that haunts our present.
491 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2024
174 people want to read
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May 28, 2025Amazing to think what our pets have witnessed, all those private acts of self abuse which they can’t speak of to anyone, imagine a dog just staring, head cocked, but then even that dog fades in time… So what remains? Our furniture. Good furniture knows what’s what. Ethan Allen. Witnessed more horror than any of us…
More thoughts here: https://youtu.be/bnxNJmasF3w
More thoughts here: https://youtu.be/bnxNJmasF3w
January 15, 2025
4.5 🌟
Set in the same near-future world as his short story collection Haunted Girlfriend, this is Nulick's first ever full length foray into speculative fiction. Told in 4 parts, through the eyes of four different narrators, the story is set in and around 2043, in a world where human cloning has been made legal. The complex, multi-layered characterizations (even the side characters) are infused with all the usual glorious Nulick tropes - loneliness, longing, 90s nostalgia, queer confusion, the cult of youth, bee keeping (lol!) - and the world building is subtle and sophisticated, slowly revealing the quirks of our unnamed city over time. But the real winner here (as always) is the prose. Winding, mellifluous sentences, some over a page long, that wind back around to face each other - the sort of highly assured slipstream prose (with no speech marks or attributions - although you never get lost on what's going on or who's speaking) where you know that every single word has been carefully placed in that particular sentence for a very specific reason. I will always and forever love reading Nulick's gloriously intimate prose, for it is hypnotic and graceful and physically pleasurable in the mouth, but in this book, I especially fell in love with the non-linear flashbacks of section 2, where our teen narrator falls in love with his straight best friend (we've all been there!) and then section 4, the final section, which is narrated by a "walker clone" trapped inside The Institute, which shone a disturbing and brutal light into the dark corners of this secretive, twilight world, including coercive captivity, forced surgical procedures and bloodsport. This is an epic in every sense of the word, a dense, tender, philosophical, unrelenting look at what it means to be human. With this book, James Nulick firmly cements himself as the Crown Prince of the literary indies!
Set in the same near-future world as his short story collection Haunted Girlfriend, this is Nulick's first ever full length foray into speculative fiction. Told in 4 parts, through the eyes of four different narrators, the story is set in and around 2043, in a world where human cloning has been made legal. The complex, multi-layered characterizations (even the side characters) are infused with all the usual glorious Nulick tropes - loneliness, longing, 90s nostalgia, queer confusion, the cult of youth, bee keeping (lol!) - and the world building is subtle and sophisticated, slowly revealing the quirks of our unnamed city over time. But the real winner here (as always) is the prose. Winding, mellifluous sentences, some over a page long, that wind back around to face each other - the sort of highly assured slipstream prose (with no speech marks or attributions - although you never get lost on what's going on or who's speaking) where you know that every single word has been carefully placed in that particular sentence for a very specific reason. I will always and forever love reading Nulick's gloriously intimate prose, for it is hypnotic and graceful and physically pleasurable in the mouth, but in this book, I especially fell in love with the non-linear flashbacks of section 2, where our teen narrator falls in love with his straight best friend (we've all been there!) and then section 4, the final section, which is narrated by a "walker clone" trapped inside The Institute, which shone a disturbing and brutal light into the dark corners of this secretive, twilight world, including coercive captivity, forced surgical procedures and bloodsport. This is an epic in every sense of the word, a dense, tender, philosophical, unrelenting look at what it means to be human. With this book, James Nulick firmly cements himself as the Crown Prince of the literary indies!
December 15, 2024
I love seeing James Nulick evolve. This continues something he started with Body by Drake, and definitely delivers. It’s still definitely his work, with the repetition and glorious prose, somehow nearly ignoring the fact that it’s science-fiction.
December 13, 2024
“How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.”
-William Shakespeare, THE TEMPEST
It’s always a cause for celebration when a new James Nulick book is released. His latest novel, PLASTIC SOUL, could be classified as a work of science fiction (or “speculative fiction,” if you want to impress the literary types), in that superficially it has many of the surface trappings of the genre (set in the near future, nanotechnology, advanced body modification, human cloning, growth acceleration, and so on), yet at the same time the genre is filtered through Nulick’s unique prism, so that the focus is also on his usual tometmistic obsessions and individual fetishes: beekeeping, Dobermans, Dickies apparel, the complicated and at times fraught relationships between children and their parents, the cult of youth and beauty, a yearning sadness for the loss of one’s youth coupled with a morbid fixation on the ravages of time, mortality, and death, and so on and so forth. Which is how I feel the true artist should approach genre fiction: utilize the tropes, but at the same time make it personal, a reflection of your artistic and aesthetical sensibilities.
Nonlinear flashbacks notwithstanding, the book is set roughly in the year 2043, and is divided into four parts of varying lengths, each one narrated by a specific character. Set in an unnamed area that has both rural and urban landscapes, and in a future world where things such as personal automobiles and mirrors have been banned (while on the subject, it is one of the novel’s nicer ironies that in a world where reflective surfaces have been outlawed, human beings are still just as narcissistic as they are now, if not more so), the primary focus here is a shadowy organization known as the Chrysalis Institute, which has seemingly mastered the art of human cloning. They not only offer clones to wealthy people as a way of alleviating loneliness, but also create special harvest clones to use as types of regenerative organ gardens, for people who want newer and better body parts to replace their current ones. As is often the case in these affairs, the clinical sterility of the Institute masks a darker horror . . . this book is at times a very disturbing glimpse into a world where humanity is slowly being replaced by the superstructure of the honeybee, its soft orange honeycomb light masking deeper shadows, a twilight world of bloodsport and pain.
The worldbuilding in this novel is very skillfully done, and though at first references to things such as the Great Ban of 2040, EGYPTE, Paphos DNA and ICOGEPAS might come off as somewhat cryptic, as you read on it all starts to make sense and quickly becomes second-nature. Some of the concepts in this book, such as the DRAKE Corporation and the Plexibubble, first appeared in earlier short stories by the author (see, for example, “Body by Drake” from the author’s HAUNTED GIRLFRIEND collection), but one doesn’t really need to know that to fully appreciate this present work. . . consider it a bonus! In any event, it’s obvious that Nulick has put a great deal of thought into the construction of this artificial world of his (although for the people out there hoping that Nirvana T-shirts will FINALLY go out of fashion, I have some very bad news for you).
Even more impressive than the worldbuilding, however, is the characterization, which I’ve long felt to be one of Nulick’s greatest talents as a writer. He obviously cares about these people he’s created, and as a reader I find myself caring about them as well: they aren’t just bloodless abstractions, but people with their own pasts and histories, and who have been forged by those pasts into what they are today. This concerns not only the four primary narrators, but even extends to more minor characters. For example, in Part Three of the book, the narrator of that section provides the reader with six case studies of clients who visited the Institute to get new body parts (or improve their bodies in some way). We briefly meet a man who wishes he were taller, another man who wished his voice was less feminine, a woman who wants a new tongue because she feels her current tongue makes her look old, and so on. On some level, there’s a bit of dark comedy in these case files, what with the superficiality of some of these (it must be said, quite financially well-off) characters and their neuroses/vanities. But there’s also a humanity and a pathos to them, as well. One thing that links many of Nulick’s characters is a kind of aching, almost metaphysical loneliness, along with the basic things that most normal people desire: to love and be loved, bodily perfection, and things of that nature. Although sometimes they do seem to yearn for a more cosmic state of affairs, or a spiritual apotheosis, in the end, too often they fall prey to the Great Materialism, and become obsessed with the body and the flesh . . . but flesh fails.
I suppose in some ways you could classify this as a difficult novel, both in terms of its length (it’s nearly 500 pages long) and density; as mentioned before, the book really only has four chapters, all of which clock over 50 pages, though these sections are divided into smaller subsections with individual names . . . one is reminded of the “condensed novels” that made up J.G. Ballard’s THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION, and certainly the subsection labeled “The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster Considered as a High School Wrestling Match” seems to be a clear reference to Ballard’s “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As A Downhill Motor Race” (which was itself a nod to Jarry’s “The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race”). There are also very long paragraphs, which often feature two people having conversations, but with no quotation marks or the usual “he said,” “she said,” so you really need to pay attention. I suppose I also found it difficult going at times due to its dystopian futuristic setting . . . you see, I am a nostalgist, and though the flame generated by the past may be a pale one, it still provides me with sustenance; but the future gives me no warmth at all (it probably also doesn’t help matters that I’m terrified of bees). Of course, the future presented here isn’t ALL bad; I like how the water closets now have walls that extend all the way down to the floor and up to the ceiling, for total privacy. And the difficulty of the novel is offset by the lusciousness of the prose: the manner in which the inside of the human skull is compared to a “vaulted dollhouse,” how the act of a woman smiling is likened to “a snow crocus breaking through the first layer of November” or (best of all) a bee colony being described as “one hundred thousand angry women singing furious Latin.” Again, this is something that I’ve long thought that Nulick is very skilled at.
How does PLASTIC SOUL compare to Nulick’s previous novels? Well, I would say that it’s better than DISTEMPER or VALENCIA, but I think I might ultimately prefer his previous novel, THE MOON DOWN TO EARTH, a slight bit more, if only because I have a more personal connection to that book that perhaps influences my judgment. But it’s reallllly close, and there’s no denying the fact that PLASTIC SOUL is Nulick’s most epic book yet, epic not only in size but also in narrative scope and ambition, and it contains many scenes that will probably stay with me for a very long time. At the same time, and most crucially, the ambition doesn’t drown out the deeply personal, and it’s not hard to find the humanity in a book that ponders that unanswerable question that has vexed greater minds for ages: what does it mean to be human?
“The future is plastic. The future is Asian.”
-James Nulick, PLASTIC SOUL
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.”
-William Shakespeare, THE TEMPEST
It’s always a cause for celebration when a new James Nulick book is released. His latest novel, PLASTIC SOUL, could be classified as a work of science fiction (or “speculative fiction,” if you want to impress the literary types), in that superficially it has many of the surface trappings of the genre (set in the near future, nanotechnology, advanced body modification, human cloning, growth acceleration, and so on), yet at the same time the genre is filtered through Nulick’s unique prism, so that the focus is also on his usual tometmistic obsessions and individual fetishes: beekeeping, Dobermans, Dickies apparel, the complicated and at times fraught relationships between children and their parents, the cult of youth and beauty, a yearning sadness for the loss of one’s youth coupled with a morbid fixation on the ravages of time, mortality, and death, and so on and so forth. Which is how I feel the true artist should approach genre fiction: utilize the tropes, but at the same time make it personal, a reflection of your artistic and aesthetical sensibilities.
Nonlinear flashbacks notwithstanding, the book is set roughly in the year 2043, and is divided into four parts of varying lengths, each one narrated by a specific character. Set in an unnamed area that has both rural and urban landscapes, and in a future world where things such as personal automobiles and mirrors have been banned (while on the subject, it is one of the novel’s nicer ironies that in a world where reflective surfaces have been outlawed, human beings are still just as narcissistic as they are now, if not more so), the primary focus here is a shadowy organization known as the Chrysalis Institute, which has seemingly mastered the art of human cloning. They not only offer clones to wealthy people as a way of alleviating loneliness, but also create special harvest clones to use as types of regenerative organ gardens, for people who want newer and better body parts to replace their current ones. As is often the case in these affairs, the clinical sterility of the Institute masks a darker horror . . . this book is at times a very disturbing glimpse into a world where humanity is slowly being replaced by the superstructure of the honeybee, its soft orange honeycomb light masking deeper shadows, a twilight world of bloodsport and pain.
The worldbuilding in this novel is very skillfully done, and though at first references to things such as the Great Ban of 2040, EGYPTE, Paphos DNA and ICOGEPAS might come off as somewhat cryptic, as you read on it all starts to make sense and quickly becomes second-nature. Some of the concepts in this book, such as the DRAKE Corporation and the Plexibubble, first appeared in earlier short stories by the author (see, for example, “Body by Drake” from the author’s HAUNTED GIRLFRIEND collection), but one doesn’t really need to know that to fully appreciate this present work. . . consider it a bonus! In any event, it’s obvious that Nulick has put a great deal of thought into the construction of this artificial world of his (although for the people out there hoping that Nirvana T-shirts will FINALLY go out of fashion, I have some very bad news for you).
Even more impressive than the worldbuilding, however, is the characterization, which I’ve long felt to be one of Nulick’s greatest talents as a writer. He obviously cares about these people he’s created, and as a reader I find myself caring about them as well: they aren’t just bloodless abstractions, but people with their own pasts and histories, and who have been forged by those pasts into what they are today. This concerns not only the four primary narrators, but even extends to more minor characters. For example, in Part Three of the book, the narrator of that section provides the reader with six case studies of clients who visited the Institute to get new body parts (or improve their bodies in some way). We briefly meet a man who wishes he were taller, another man who wished his voice was less feminine, a woman who wants a new tongue because she feels her current tongue makes her look old, and so on. On some level, there’s a bit of dark comedy in these case files, what with the superficiality of some of these (it must be said, quite financially well-off) characters and their neuroses/vanities. But there’s also a humanity and a pathos to them, as well. One thing that links many of Nulick’s characters is a kind of aching, almost metaphysical loneliness, along with the basic things that most normal people desire: to love and be loved, bodily perfection, and things of that nature. Although sometimes they do seem to yearn for a more cosmic state of affairs, or a spiritual apotheosis, in the end, too often they fall prey to the Great Materialism, and become obsessed with the body and the flesh . . . but flesh fails.
I suppose in some ways you could classify this as a difficult novel, both in terms of its length (it’s nearly 500 pages long) and density; as mentioned before, the book really only has four chapters, all of which clock over 50 pages, though these sections are divided into smaller subsections with individual names . . . one is reminded of the “condensed novels” that made up J.G. Ballard’s THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION, and certainly the subsection labeled “The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster Considered as a High School Wrestling Match” seems to be a clear reference to Ballard’s “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As A Downhill Motor Race” (which was itself a nod to Jarry’s “The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race”). There are also very long paragraphs, which often feature two people having conversations, but with no quotation marks or the usual “he said,” “she said,” so you really need to pay attention. I suppose I also found it difficult going at times due to its dystopian futuristic setting . . . you see, I am a nostalgist, and though the flame generated by the past may be a pale one, it still provides me with sustenance; but the future gives me no warmth at all (it probably also doesn’t help matters that I’m terrified of bees). Of course, the future presented here isn’t ALL bad; I like how the water closets now have walls that extend all the way down to the floor and up to the ceiling, for total privacy. And the difficulty of the novel is offset by the lusciousness of the prose: the manner in which the inside of the human skull is compared to a “vaulted dollhouse,” how the act of a woman smiling is likened to “a snow crocus breaking through the first layer of November” or (best of all) a bee colony being described as “one hundred thousand angry women singing furious Latin.” Again, this is something that I’ve long thought that Nulick is very skilled at.
How does PLASTIC SOUL compare to Nulick’s previous novels? Well, I would say that it’s better than DISTEMPER or VALENCIA, but I think I might ultimately prefer his previous novel, THE MOON DOWN TO EARTH, a slight bit more, if only because I have a more personal connection to that book that perhaps influences my judgment. But it’s reallllly close, and there’s no denying the fact that PLASTIC SOUL is Nulick’s most epic book yet, epic not only in size but also in narrative scope and ambition, and it contains many scenes that will probably stay with me for a very long time. At the same time, and most crucially, the ambition doesn’t drown out the deeply personal, and it’s not hard to find the humanity in a book that ponders that unanswerable question that has vexed greater minds for ages: what does it mean to be human?
“The future is plastic. The future is Asian.”
-James Nulick, PLASTIC SOUL
July 12, 2025
This was weird, mostly in a good way, but I could have gone without at least half of the chapter about the rich clone-buyer who wanted to fuck his sister.
June 12, 2025
Taking place in the near future, when CRISPR gene manipulation has been mastered, Plastic Soul describes a techno-dystopia outfitted in cheering, yet subtle, color and fabric combinations. The source of the action takes place at the Chrysalis Institute, an organization specializing in providing clones of their clients that can be delivered “aged” to the client’s preference: A 16-year-old version of themselves? 22? Clones arrive with the client’s own lifetime of memories and knowledge and can be modified to include additional abilities. On a darker note, clients can also request a life-termination switch for their clones be installed.
The book’s four sections include two by two different clients; one primarily from one of the doctors at the institute, including case studies; and one from a clone’s point of view. Plastic Soul explores the moral rights claimed by each.
Although Plastic Soul deals with clones and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep / Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner deal with robots, all three works provide these avatars of technology with human memories, which in turn imbues them with a soul that demands self-determination and agency. When souls in fetters meet people with a level of knowledge and money that assumes kowtowing on the part of others toward them, trouble begins. The narrative James Nulick’s Plastic Soul transcends the genre trappings of escapist SF, convincingly conveying the real needs of all people, including the need to be understood, accepted, and respected as fully human.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
The book’s four sections include two by two different clients; one primarily from one of the doctors at the institute, including case studies; and one from a clone’s point of view. Plastic Soul explores the moral rights claimed by each.
Although Plastic Soul deals with clones and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep / Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner deal with robots, all three works provide these avatars of technology with human memories, which in turn imbues them with a soul that demands self-determination and agency. When souls in fetters meet people with a level of knowledge and money that assumes kowtowing on the part of others toward them, trouble begins. The narrative James Nulick’s Plastic Soul transcends the genre trappings of escapist SF, convincingly conveying the real needs of all people, including the need to be understood, accepted, and respected as fully human.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
January 11, 2025
Plastic Soul is towering with an authenticity, sense of discovery, and creativity of vision that is rarely accomplished with such grace in fiction that it is almost as if while reading, the pages of the book themselves begin to dissolve away within our hands to reveal for the reader a much clearer, deeper, more honest view of what it means to be human, allowing us an unrelenting insight rarely seen behind the veils of a world so radically in transformation under the throws of a technocratic revolution that even our polyurethane replacement doubles, the new and improved doppelgängers of The Institute strive to replace us, yet, we instead, under the brilliant literary hand of James Nulick, resist the impulse of total collapse, instead we end up becoming more alive and more importantly, more our authentic shelves, more deeply and enlightened than ever as a result of reading Plastic Soul, which accomplishes what the greatest novels of our time dares to imagine and that is a radical repositioning of our proximity to not only ourselves, but also to the changing world around us.
~Phillip Freedenberg
Author of America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic
Buffalo, NY
January 2025
~Phillip Freedenberg
Author of America and the Cult of the Cactus Boots: A Diagnostic
Buffalo, NY
January 2025
March 17, 2025
This just ended and I don’t know where to begin. It’s unlike anything else out right now, maybe for years before it. Painstakingly layered yet with every Nulick work, it reads like a breeze. A towering analogy for our times. One of those books that seems to be about everything, told by one focused bullet piercing every page. Are you still yet to be sentient?
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