Crab: A Novel

by Mark Wallace

It's 1999. Change is coming. A mysterious technology called the Crab is infiltrating the minds of U.S. citizens with dreams from another planet. Sarah's psychic abilities make her the first person to recognize the alien dreams crashing around New York City, but what should she do? Does the Crab free people's minds, or enslave them? Marinda, a painter who can't make herself paint, has an ex-boyfriend determined to get her back or punish her for leaving, he can't tell which. The strange late night phone calls he's getting, source unknown, are egging him on. Jerry, who thinks New York is his for the taking, is getting the calls too, and growing increasingly volatile and confused. Across the U.S., in government buildings and in bars, violence is spreading, and no one knows why. Is it the Crab? As the danger rises in this disturbing, suspenseful, and humorous novel, the question turns urgent: whose dreams are people really dreaming?

252 pages, Paperback

Published May 10, 2017

About the author

Mark Wallace was born in 1962 in Princeton, New Jersey and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Between the ages of 8 and 17, with his father and brother he drove across the United States to Southern California on camping trips every summer, once going by way of Mexico City and once by way of Lake Banff, and he has spent time in all 48 of US mainland states.

The numerous bad jobs he has worked since the age of 15 are distinguished not by working class physical labor but by the low paid tedium of the contemporary world’s bureaucratic nightmare.

He received his Ph.D. from the State University at Buffalo with his dissertation The Gothic Universe in the Fiction of Paul Bowles and William Burroughs. He worked at Buffalo as a student assistant to Charles Bernstein on "The Wednesdays At Four Plus" reading series.