Club Ded

by Nikhil Singh

Club Ded is an exhilarating psychedelic-noir, the second novel from Nikhil Singh, author of Taty Went West , which was shortlisted for Best African Novel at the inaugural Nommo Awards.Club Ded is shortlisted for Best Novel and Best Artwork at the BSFA Awards. Shortlisted for the NOMMO Awards - Best Novel.Brick Bryson, iconic African-American 90s action star, is fresh out of rehab and shooting the doomed sci-fi blockbuster CLUB DED with his old drinking buddy, bad boy, #metoo'd director, Croeser, in South Africa. But all is not as it seems. Behind the scenes, operatives of Oracle Inc., an elite, all-female information gathering organisation, have gone rogue. Utilising their vast criminal resources, they're pushing the interests of a street-level psychedelic drug-cult - spearheaded by the mysterious ex-Nollywood director Fortunato, and his underground 'reality- revolutionaries'. As the subtropical, fish-derived drug begins to exert an apocalyptic influence in secret, the fabric of time itself begins to unravel. Set in Cape Town, Club Ded expands the Afrofuturist genre while it is still being formed, focusing on the methodology of creation in the media world of the city. "Nikhil Singh is the compelling, razor sharp and hallucinogenic voice of nascent and imminent African futures. In Club Ded, he rides a wild and filmic dialectic between America and Africa, all handled with scabrous surety and emotional force. Nikhil is a writer to be experienced, not just read." Nick Wood, author of Azanian Bridges and Learning Monkey and Crocodile   "Club Ded is a laugh out loud riot. And yet each staccato chapter retains a gravitas that builds and builds to provide a Pynchonesque future vision of South Africa and the larger African continent with its aging action movie star, neurotic film director, beautiful sirens, paparazzi, charismatic wanderers, talking chimps and alien creatures. Nikhil Singh has outdone himself with this new novel - his dialogue is as sharp as ever, his new world grim but intoxicating. Club Ded is so f...d up, so hilarious and so brilliant." Billy Kahora, Former Editor, Kwani? and author of The Cape Cod Bicycle WarContent Themes of violence, sex and drug abuse.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Africa, Science Fiction Fantasy

316 pages, ebook

First published June 2, 2020

About the author

BIO

Nikhil Singh is a South African artist, writer and musician. Former projects include the graphic novels: Salem Brownstone written by John Harris Dunning (longlisted for the Branford Boase Award, Walker Books 2009) as well as The Ziggurat (Bell-Roberts 2003) by The Constructus Corporation (now Die Antwoord). His/her/It's work has also been featured in various magazines including Dazed, i-D Online, Creative Review, as well as Pictures and Words: New Comic Art and Narrative Illustration (Laurence King, 2005) and Design Week UK. His/her/It's debut novel Taty Went West was published by Kwani? Trust in 2015, Jacaranda Books (UK) in 2017, and Rosarium (US) in 2018. The book was released with illustrations by the author, a self-produced soundtrack and was shortlisted for Best African Novel in the inaugural Nommo Awards. He/She/It was invited to submit a story to The Unquiet Dreamer, a prestigious Harlan Ellison tribute, from PS Publishing in 2019. The story The Re-Evolution of Cloud 9, was also longlisted for Best Story in the 2020 Nommo Awards. The novel Club Ded, published by Luna Press Publishing (UK) in June 2020 was shortlisted for Best Novel in the 2021 British Science Fiction Association Awards and the 2021 Nommo Awards. He/She/It has recently completed the James Currey workshop for writing and publishing at Oxford University and was invited to chair a panel at the Oxford Literary Festival 2022, discussing his/her/it's work.

To date, the author has participated in the following festivals as either an a panelist, awards presenter, featured reader: African Futures (Nairobi 2015), Time of the Writer (SA 2015), African Utopia (Southbank Center UK 2015), Africa Writes (British Library UK / Royal African Society 2016), Worldcon 75/Hugo Awards (Hugo Awards presenter / profiled writer Helsinki 2017), South African Book Fair / Book week (SA 2017), Readercon (Boston 2018), New York Science Fiction Review (NY 2018). Cymera (Edinburgh Festival 2020), DisCon III (Washington 2021), Oxford Literary Festival (2022)




SALEM BROWNSTONE quotes

ANTHONY MINGHELLA: “Salem Brownstone is a graphic novel that is both original and compelling. There's a seamless relationship between the images and the text, and the characters linger in the mind. I look forward to the continuing adventures of Salem Brownstone!”

HARMONY KORINE: Salem Brownstone kicked my ass and made me believe in the beautiful darkness of the world again.’

JEFFERSON HACK (editorial director of the Dazed magazine group, founding Dazed magazine with photographer Rankin ) : 'Salem Brownstone is a hypnotically beautiful gothic fantasy.”

ALAN MOORE: "A wonderfully imaginative and stylish piece of work and a perfect example of the adventurous new directions that comic books should be taking in the future."



CLUB DED quotes

‘Club Ded is a kaleidoscopic look at the processes of creation and art through the dual lenses of realism and Afrofuturism. The cultural clash between Bryson and Fortunanto microcosmically reflect the complexities of relations and exchanges between the US and South Africa. It feels as though author Nikhil Singh is on an academic discourse against generalisation and stereotype: comparisons in ideals of American commercialism and ‘African’ mysticism. Singh bolsters the narrative with a penetrating understanding of contemporary South Africa, and subtle, but astute, use of social commentary. He writes unapologetically about issues such as poverty, racism, substance abuse and classism. With incredible humanity, all characters are flawed. If not relatable, they are believable. Singh creates mystery in a steady release of plot. With no real clues to puzzle things together, the narrative is unclear for a large part of the book, yet Singh successfully retains the reader in actively focusing their attention on what proves to be key information. Club Ded is a self-aware novel. Singh makes a calculated contribution to Afrofuturism in quest

Reviews

[Wole Talabi]

There's a lot going on in this entertaining, brilliantly-rendered postmodern, psychedelic-noir African novel. Much of it is strange, fascinating, concerned with the nature of art, and varying views of Africa and 'Africanness' seen through a grimy Cape Town prism.
Nikhil's writing is at once funny, sincere, punchy, grim, sometimes confusing but always compelling. I particularly enjoyed all the elements of the main plot of the book concerned with the filming of Club Ded. I also loved the parallels and interactions between Brick and Fortunato as well as between Ziq and Jennifer, the way their stories eventually come full circle with each other. There are some rough bits in there, which I didn't quite enjoy so much but which I think are important parts of the tapestry of Club Ded. All in all, this book was an engrossing, wild ride which may not be for everyone, but if you are a fan of the postmodern its very much worth your time.
Rating is a solid 4.5 rounded up to 5.

[Becky]

I’ve been looking forward to trying Singh’s work since seeing him speak at an SFF Convention several years ago, but unfortunately my love for this book pretty much begins and ends with its gorgeous cover.⁣
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Club Ded is basically about a film production? The speculative elements promised by the blurb’s “fabric of time itself begins to unravel” never materialized beyond maybe the psychedelic drugs (though I found the whole drug cult to be far less interesting than hoped) and this goo that lets the characters breathe underwater. The book for me was all convoluted plot and an overabundance of characters, none of whom inspired me to care about them. Singh also had this jarring habit of cutting what felt like a single sentence into two, which made the reading experience strangely stilted. I finished the book mostly out of stubbornness and flickering curiosity, and very much don’t feel I “got” it. But not every book is for every person, so I'd love to hear your thoughts if you've read this one!⁣
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Cw for rape including of minors, drug addiction, alcoholism, racism, sexism, transphobia/cissexism, misgendering including repeated use of 'it' pronouns for a character, slurs, animal abuse, suicide.⁣

[Ntshuks Bonga]

CLUB DED is a real rollercoaster ride. Very intelligently written, the book works on so many levels. Ostensively about a troubled SCI-FI film shoot, and while often being other worldly, it addresses a myriad of "this world", real life issues concerning the individual, his / her / it's place in society and the fracture points that exist between peoples locally (the South African experience) and further afield. And this is done totally unsentimentally, without being didactic and with little regard for politeness. There are many inter twined stories with characters that captivate, amuse and repulse - often all at the same time. Whatever their nature and primary motivations, they are all searching.
Nikhil's writing style is insightful, amusing, nimble and esoteric, and you will feel compelled to follow him and his characters anywhere.

[S. Scott]

This is not an easy book to read. Wait, no, that's an understatement. This book is straight-up difficult and disturbing. And yet, it's also a damned good book.

The Club Ded of the title is two things. First, it's a movie stuck in the last throes of production hell in a post-cyberpunk Capetown. Brick Bryson is called in by the movie's director Del Croeser to save his over-budget, past-schedule project from an ignominious death. The only problem is, Brick and Croeser have a history that's almost guaranteed to get in the way of their working relationship. Probably.

The second Club Ded is another thing entirely. A dark, twisted, hidden thing that ... well, no spoilers. Suffice to say it's just one of the many dark and twisted things that make this novel so damned uncomfortable to read.

As well as Brick and Croeser, there's a whole veritable menagerie of other characters working their way under your skin and into your subconscious. Characters like Trill, the transvestite prostitute who just wants to have a good time but finds themselves getting pulled into the machinations of the rich and powerful. Or Sulette, the bored Boer housewife looking for darker and more disturbing thrills. Or Ziq, pickpocket and street philosopher. So many characters, in fact, that keeping track of them all becomes an almost Sisyphean task. There is so much going on in this book.

Stylistically it's a frenetic, staccato assault on the senses. Broken sentences. Telling the story in short bursts. Representative of broken trains of thought. It's almost as if William Gibson and Jeff Noon had a love child and then handed that child over to William S Burroughs for the wrong sort of literary education. Reading this book put me heavily in mind of Naked Lunch, and for that alone I love it.

As I said at the top, this is not an easy book to read. But it's definitely worth the effort.

[Nicholas Whyte]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3645878.html

I bounced off this quite hard, and did not even make it 40 pages in. I found the writing style downright annoying and did not care about any of the characters.

[Abby]

Terrible terrible terrible. It was supposed to be about the makings of a movie but just ended up being about people eating fish glands and doing drugs. Lame. Also, boring. The part about the guy building a beach in his basement to deal with his childhood trauma was kinda interesting tho. Overall this sucked.

[S.L.]

Disappointing. It sounded interesting, but the writing is so long-winded and overly detailed that it's a dull drag to read and keep track of the actual story amongst all the filler.

[Emily Perkovich]

I would have probably considered giving this 5 stars, but it sooooo badly needed a copy editor. So many obvious, easy fix errors made this hard for me to look past reader clarity issues.

[Jared Woods]

UPDATE: Nikhil blocked me on Facebook after he read this review.

Driven by your standard sex and drugs shock momentum, Club Ded switches the rock & roll medium for film instead. The story loosely revolves around a movie production in Cape Town (my home city!), told in a unique style where unnecessarily shortened sentences both jar and punch the reader to bits.

However, if the onslaught of compact phrases doesn’t test your focus, then the rapid flooding of names will. Nikhil boasts a bright display of solid qualities, and his character introductions are one of them, building investment by using actions over backstories. Unfortunately, it can be a case of too many too quick, and I found the general character development was lacking. We are often offered only a few pages to commit each individual to memory before they vanish for countless chapters more. Couple this frantic crowd with a slight lack of distinction between many of their personalities, and frequent connections are lost.

That said, these complaints do not apply to every character, and I must give a lot of love to Trill. I was forever excited when they slinked onto the scene, and I’d happily read an entire book about this creature alone.

Above this, the author’s skillset shines brightest when his evident adoration for film meets his passion for the art of writing. Nikhil harnesses a poetic command of language where his sentences appear surgically constructed, every description as sharp as they are unpredictable, even if that means sacrificing coherency. I am intensely sensitive to bad dialogue, but Club Ded’s exchanges were a pleasure to read, and I was impressed by a literary standard that rivals the best of them. On a side note, I want to take fish glands.

Sadly, a large portion of my Club Ded experience was ruined by Nikhil himself. His social media presence exposes an artist of impenetrable arrogance. He dwells upon a basic contrarian pedestal where he hisses his bloated sense of importance at anyone with a counter-opinion on otherwise completely subjective subjects. I have been struck by his poison myself. I distinctly recall the day he claimed that “no other writer is on my level,” which is not only untrue but also off-putting. Consequently, I found myself unfairly scouring these texts for the overuse of certain words and grammatical errors, of which there was a surprising amount. But even as I come away with an arsenal of negatives, in the end, I can’t fault a novel this talented, and while I’ll never love Nikhil’s work as much as he loves his work, how could anyone? I hear there’s a sequel on the way, and I look forward to reading that too.

[Peter]

Let me preface this that I love orginal, creative writers and I also love many new weird authors this book sometimes reminds me of. It does contain themes that not everybody will like, such as drugs and pornography, but that is okay.

So, I started reading this book with high hopes. Unfortunately, despite the haunting beauty of some snatches the prose, it was ultimatey a disappointment and I do not recommend it.

So, there are lots of negatives... Where to start... Well first off this novel needs a much better editor (or some editing at all). It's just full of errors, mispellings, repetitions etc. It definitely affects the enjoyment of the novel.
Secondly, while the prose is often very beautiful, it contains many long sequences that are just too long, too relentlessly focused on piling details upon details. In smaller does they could come across dreamlike and poetic, but stretched for so many pages they end up being mostly just obsessively pedantic and annoying.

Worst of all, though, there are too many characters, too many barely skethed stories and ideas, too many idiotic and disconnected narratives... The overarching narrative is really just an excuse to touch upon a million different themes (never looked at in any depth) disconnected characters and situations or scenes with more often than not nothing more than shock value going for them. The fact that many of those threads just make no sense at all doesn't help either.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that this writer has some talent but he obviously has no understanding of storytelling and just cares about collecting random images often shocking and disturbing. Overall it was very disappointing.

[Tiah]

~Dressing like an alien slut doesn't contradict any of my feminist values.~

~It wasn't that Anita saw herself as racist. Far from it. 'Hey, I'm the first to get off on interracial porn' was the usual excuse.~

~I've seen the faces of tapeworms.~

~She has become the seascape itself. She can sense, within her blood flow, the ebb of great tides. Her bones harbour millions of small, shelled creatures. Waves of sensory input crash against the reef of her mind. She desperately wants to submerge. In warm tropical water. yet, remains trapped. In some inter-dimensional glass coffin, outside of time.~

~He described how the routines of society had stripped the mythological from humanity's carcass. He saw people as soft, pliant and utterly dependent. Centuries of programming had, in his eyes, manufactured prisoners of comfort. Time-victims, scattered about the earth, in futuristic anthills.~

~Now she languished dutifully in this new course. She began to follow its stream into a sphere of light. Writing her future as though it were a thing already written.~

[Jen]

I adore your visionz dear Nikhil, biting at thyne own oracle, blistering semblance ov jet black hollows, enraptured, floating in the silver webbing of my own drives, diving into light that cannot obey the true frequency of love, Darth, echoing the desert of the real, my insides, split onto the floor of the Marianas Trench. Love Jen Shen

[Sarah]

Review

Ultimately, I found this book disappointing. The setting was really interesting, particularly the Club Ded segments, and I thought a lot of the drama around making the movie was exciting.

Unfortunately I found the prose really difficult to read because it was so choppy, and there were a lot of typos and punctuation mistakes.

The violence was uninteresting and unrelenting and it felt like the disparate storylines were meant to blend together for some kind of payoff and then didn't. There was some writing about a transfem character from a chaser's point of view that seemed potentially interesting but then every single character including herself talked about her that way.