Black Hole

by Bucky Sinister

Chuck is addicted to drugs, some too new for a name -- weird, experimental drugs that mangle the fabric of his reality. The solution to all his drug problems is more drugs, each one more chaotic than the last. He's wearing out his welcome at his job raising dwarf whales to sell to the tech geeks of San Francisco, and he's burning all his bridges in the party scene.

When a new substance called Black Hole shows up on the streets, it offers a promise unlike any other: this drug never runs out. For a while, it's the perfect drug. But when Chuck wakes up from a blackout as a suspect in the murder of his boss, he needs time to sort out what happened. The bad news: time no longer seems to be in chronological order.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Mystery Thriller, Horror, Drugs, Novels

181 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2015

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chuck is not a good person. He is a bitter forty-something druggie with no prospects and no ambition beyond the next score. His job involves feeding mini-whales for a tech-millionaire that are sold to other tech millionaires (to say he is alienated from his work would be a drastic understatement), his friends run the gambit from drug addled strippers to obese drug dealers to steroid addicts. And these aren't scrappy, down on their luck underdog downtrodden folks, they are legitimately bad people. They have little to no empathy for others, are more than willing to steal drugs off each other, and aren't afraid to dish out some pain if the situation calls for it. All in all, these are not the sort of people most folks would want to have any encounter with.

So why did I find this book so compelling?

Simple put Chuck was a very fascinating character. He is fully self-aware of his scumminess. He knows he is way past his prime, that he snorted/shot up/smoked most of his life away. That his so called friends are merely that because of convenience. He knows he is at rock bottom and is perfectly content with that. He, like all addicts, lives for the next high. He knows that and accepts that. He doesn't hate himself for it, he recognizes it for what it is: a lifestyle that will inevitably destroy him (he is surprised he is even still alive), a lifestyle he is too old for, and a lifestyle he will continue as long as he can.

The other thing he knows is how much San Francisco and the Bay Area have changed since the 90's. He will go on and on about how much neighborhoods have changed. How yoga studios and artisanal cheese shops are pushing out the businesses of old, cleaning up and rounding off the sharp edges of San Francisco. Gone are the dirty, rough, raw, violent days of old. Tech money has pushed all the undesirables out and made the city a safe place for yuppies to live. He hates gentrification, but recognizes it as inevitable and even enjoys some of its benefits.

This mixture of self awareness, bitterness, and self-destructive life style just made him a very interesting character to follow. In fact he sort of reminded me of Tyler Durden from Fight Club. Only instead of pontificating on abstract philosophical principles and societal organization Chuck's insights are grounded in his experiences and what is happening on the ground. His bitterness seemed rooted in actual wrongs and changes instead of abstractly attacking society.

For example, a few weeks back I was in San Francisco on vacation (where I bought this book). After having dinner with a friend and her fiance in the Mission District we decided to walk around for a bit. The Mission District is an interesting place with lots of neat graffiti and businesses. Not the ritziest place and in fact it has been gentrifying quite a bit of late. During this walk they spotted a listing for an apartment that they thought was a steal: 1 bedroom, 1 parking spot apartment for $3,700 a month. A MONTH!!!! It is no surprise that the city Chuck grew old in was dying. This single incident really made me sympathetic to Chuck's perspective on things.

Anyway there's a murder, some freaky designer drugs (because money attracts new drugs like flies to whatever flies actually like), blood, guts, and crazy spirit animals. Sinister attributes Philip K. Dick as an influence. If you have read any of Dick's trippier books (the dude loved drugs and it showed) you will recognize this way before the acknowledgements at the end. Chuck spends the entire book getting high, coming down, or evening himself out. Given the book is written from his perspective the reader gets to go along for the ride.

While there is technically a murder mystery (among other unsavory happenings), this book is more about the exploration of the underside of humanity and the effect of gentrification, the winners and losers (but mostly the losers), and the life of an addict. Personally I found it quite fascinating even if I found the end a bit too Philip K. Dick-esque for my taste (don't expect much closure). It is way outside my typical book taste but I am quite glad I took a chance in buying it.

[charlie medusa · Rating 3 out of 5]

j'ai vraiment bien aimé mais surtout au début et ensuite au fil de ma lecture il fallait un peu que je me répète "j'aime ce livre" pour continuer d'avoir envie de le lire. je pense que parfois on prend les drogues pour un sujet un peu plus intéressant qu'elles ne le sont. j'aurais voulu encore plus de contenu sur la fabrication industrielle de minibaleines domestiques. cela, ça m'a plu. plus que les ébats sexuels du monsieur. une pensée émue pour les femmes de ce livre. je n'ai pas lu Philip K. Dick askip ça me fait passer à côté de pas mal de trucs. pétition pour l'existence de livres qu'on a le droit de lire même si on n'a pas lu d'autres livres. morale de l'histoire : peut-être qu'être grunge c'est plus intéressant en musique qu'en littérature. disons que ça se répète moins (plus court).

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times it seems that all of us Gen-Xers are stuck in a temporal gash in perception's fabric. Born in a wilder time, we have watched the helmetization of life. We gentrify a little bit more slowly. We haven't got an entirely plausible retirement scenario. We are part of both problem and solution.

Bucky's voice speaks well enough for me. I am that same old codger, spinning yarns of an affordable Bay Area in a time where there was a stripper for every bouncer. The whiskey and pills flowed like the bats at Mission Delores. A time when one could choose to work part-time and yet still party full-on. Not many authors can have me missing the Tenderloin and The old Strand.

BH is an exciting read. Not unlike Carlos Velazquez, Sinister shows us that there really is a form and purpose to the work done by Burroughs, Dick and Ballard. The narrative timeline has no right to exist unmolested.

Bucky smash!

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bucky Sinister’s Black Hole is designer drugs so new they haven’t been outlawed. It’s dead end jobs, douchebag dot com’ers, punk rock heroes, and a self-depreciating jones climbing on your back like a proverbial monkey in a cheap suit. Bucky Sinister nails the incomprehensible demoralization of the addict’s existence. Hell, he nails it so well you won’t have to try it for yourself. If Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs had somehow conceived a 250-pound-bad-ass-kettlebell-swinging-menace-to-society—he’d have been Bucky Sinister.

[Krysten]

dnf @ maybe like 40%. I am really on a roll picking books that sound more interesting than they are. even this far into the book it's mostly just, I'm a drug guy who does drugs, and did I also mention drugs, with a side of drugs, on my way to get drugs, in a San Francisco my old ass doesn't recognize anymore. with drugs.

stop letting white men write books.

[Nato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because Bucky is a friend, I bought the book for full price at a local independent bookstore to support things that deserve support. Fortunately, it's also great. It is dark and painful and funny in the same great way as Bucky's standup comedy. It's also a gross and twisted view into underworlds that I have no experience of. It's the best say no to drugs book I've ever heard of.

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good! It's one of those books about a dude on drugs who has to keep doing more drugs to keep going (a la Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), so it reads really fast and you wince at all the choices he's making. Also it got a little gross (drug addict, after all) and I was worried it would get TOO gross because I don't like gross things, but it never crossed over that line for me.

Oh also it's about gentrification a lot, and it's funny when it's trying to be. And it gets all timey-wimey and you know I love that shit.

[Brent Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possibly the best depiction of what doing multiple drugs at once feels like. Great writing overall

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've not crushed a book in the way I did Bucky Sinister's novel Black Hole. Finished it in 3 hours. I found it immediately accessible and the contrasting philosophies currently tearing San Francisco apart are laid open in clear-eyed prose driven by a washed-up no-shit narrator. The forces at work are very real in this science fiction novel: tech-moneyed brunch buyers YouTube-shaming crackheads in the Tenderloin, cops and nurses with depressing seen-it-all stoicism, queens and squatters and designer drugs. Combined together with what is basically a reality-bending crack rock, Chuck the protagonist is a wonderfully imperfect guide walking through a tattered landscape of our city's socio-economic extremes. The places are real, 24th St, The Mission Jones St, The Rialto, Market...and Sinister's novel is a smart and awakening ride in a sadly familiar world, shit zombies and all.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cleverly constructed and somewhat surreal tour through the dregs of druggy San Francisco. Gentrification, hipsterism, hedonism, and the pitiful plight of the aging addict are all addressed in this noir-ish tour de force. Not every conceit works perfectly, but the book goes down easy and is well worth the read.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good effing book. perfect mix of mind fuck, rolling commentary and a world you'd never want to live in but is fascinating like a car wreck. the protagonist is you, if you're 45ish, stepped out on reality and never came back from the edge, just jumped on in. and stayed in SF instead of heading back to Texas.

[MariNaomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn, Bucky!

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the most debased thing I have read, probably ever, and I could not put it down. I'm not sure how well the ending sits with me, but really entertaining.

[PhattandyPDX · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I was cool between the ages of about 22 and 28, and then it all slid into the shitslide of middle age, early. I got a job at a cool bar at 22 and suddenly I was cool. I got in free to cool shows. I met cool girls. I got to stay after hours at other cool bars. I lived in a cool party flat with cool roommates. Cool places with cool people doing cool things and fucking each other later in cool apartments. That’s all about being cool is: surrounding yourself with other people and having everyone agree that everything you’re doing is fucking cool. Six years of doing that shit. Being cool. That bar went out of business, And when I tried to get more work, everything was DJs and shit. No more punk rock clubs. No more being cool. Young people didn’t want bands anymore; they wanted a jack ass with a box of fucking records. Not even good music. I went into an 80s night, thinking it would be the good tracks of punk and new wave and what used to be called college rock and then became alternative rock in the next decade.”

[Chris Berko · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I personally loved but alas I cannot recommend it to everyone. I was a teenager during the rave scene of the 1990's and have ingested my fair share of mood-altering substances so a lot of the content that many would find shocking or unsettling I find hilarious and anecdotal. I also read a lot of science fiction and not many authors tackle what substance abuse is going to look like in the future so it was really cool exploring some of the concepts presented within these pages, in terms of new highs and what can be done. I do have a sick sense of humor and I love reading disturbing literature and while this is no where near as graphic as some other books I've read, there is enough shit (literally) to turn off even a most jaded reader. Proceed with caution, enter at your own risk, but if you like stuff your not going to see on any Barnes and Noble display, this is a very fun read!

[Eman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit triggering if you've ever been aft to the drug life. The story paints the walls in violent splatters and gravid splotches of morose colors and asks you to sit in the room and listen. It's more unusual than your typical novel in that it borrows from sci-fi, but tells a completely believable tale of possible time travel - possible hallucination. Either way, there seem to be stark consequences for Chuck in every timeline he finds himself in.
Chuck doesn't want you to like him, or root for him, and you probably won't. There aren't any heroes in this one. It's a Cohen Bros non-story story from San Francisco. A snippet(s) of time that you're merely privy to witnessing. A good one at that.

Would've given it a higher star rating, but it made me feel too many of my own feels, and for that it suffered a star. A great book, just not a very happy one.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

You want to put in some work for me?
Is it legal?
Big Mike busts up laughing, Bro, he says, you are fucking hilarious.

…I wake up to a sticky note on the floor next to my head. It says, ‘who are you?’

Fuck this apartment, this flat, all the San Francisco rooms for rent-they’re too small, they’re not heated, there’s mold everywhere. Six people to five bedrooms, sometimes more. Thin walls, hollow-core doors, upstairs tap dancing neighbours. Tinderbox buildings one knocked over candle away from a bonfire…

[Udayan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rollercoaster psychedelic romp through the backalleys of San Francisco fuelled by real and imaginary drugs. All in search of the ultimate trip, a drug which doesn't run out by making you travel in time !!!

Go get sucked into this black hole. You won't regret it a bit. After all, how many times have you thought about giving it all up and just "taking the edge off" your life?

[Ayn Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hilariously written, over-the-top, drug-fueled ride through modern techie San Francisco. I laughed out loud throughout this one! This is less if a novel than a fast burn through the junkie mindset: one that is always chasing a loftier high and one that - at least in this case - never changes.

[Johnny No Bueno · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wildly original novel, yet strangely familiar. In a William S Burroughs meets Philip K Dick fashion, Sinister paints an impecible picture of a drug-induced near future that becomes both alluring and horrifying. Not a dull page in the whole book. Sinisters playful wit drips from each page.

[Stephen Kearse]

Without this gem, there's no Liquid Snakes. I'm forever grateful.

I found it in a used bookstore in Manhattan in 2016 and read it obsessively. It's got a vivid sense of place and rhythm, and some intensely textured descriptions of bodies and surfaces. I read it in one sitting every single time.

[Tony Leach · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but wild ride through the drug-fueled underbelly of San Francisco's present/future.

[Fiona van Dahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hypnotizing. It's impossible to complain about the ending because it matches the rest of the book. I've been recommending it to all my IRL friends.

[Delroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Itself a bit of an unknown drug; great fun, disappointed there weren't big rails of Bucky's writing lined up for me to keep the party going after this one was finished.

[Pamela · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of those books where the writer is trying too hard to be funny and witty and clever, but just winds up being tedious and more tedious and even more tedious.

[Nicholas Gibas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was captured by the first chapter. A great little book. Full of absurdity, drug use and humans covered in excrement? Bizarre, but it works so well.

[Kate Rymer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was nuts hahaha

[Okeefe Niemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wild ride. Would highly recommend going into this book blind.

[Stephanie Edd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phillip K Dick but make it literary. A gut punch and a crack up. I love this book.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating. Hard to explain, but involves time traveling and meeting yourself coming and going.