9780992008086_

The man was clearly insane. He wanted to kill them all. The Baby Boomers. The Generation Xers. Hated them worse than lepers. He wanted to kill them in their cars.

In the tradition of Infinite Jest and White Noise comes a novel of a darkly satirical alternate future...

Los Angeles. The mid-2020s. Rock MacLean is an A-list actor at the height of his famehandsome and wealthy. But middle age is creeping up. With nowhere to go but down, his wife is threatening to leave him and take their two little girls. No wondereven Rock thinks he might be a sex addict. Far from having it all, Rocks about to lose everything. And he doesnt even care.

But when a drug deal with Nicaraguan gangsters goes sour, Rock finds himself in the path of Dewey Lanea fanatical army colonel with a plan to wipe Southern California off the map. Trapped in a mountainside bunker, Rock watches helplessly as Dewey sets off an electronic pulsecausing the simultaneous destruction of every automobile in Los Angeles.

But thats only phase one of Deweys plan. Phase two? Nuclear Armageddon. And only Rock can stop it. 1980 The Year the Past Disappeared is a novel where delusion, sex, and cheap weapons of mass terror intersect in a satirical look at a materialistic and cynical future.

From inside the novel

Spare me the speech. The plans in motion. Theres no way to stop me.

Youre going to blow the top off this mountain?

Dewey laughed. No, Im going to blow up the crust of the earth under Los Angeles. Let it catch fire. I suppose you had time to examine the tools where I left you the last time.

Yeah, but

Next to that conveyor belt is a bore hole. Reaching down twenty-five kilometers into the earth. Its super hot. Thats where the bomb will drop, hitting terminal velocity in a vacuum, once the air is sucked out of the hole.

What is this? said Rock. Some kind of science experiment?

The computer simulation

Bulls. You have no idea what youre doing. That bomb wont destroy anything underground. The Soviets have been doing this for almost a century.

Dont be so sure.

Tell me, did you create the tsunami, too?

Dewey smiled. I doubt it. But who knows what causes earthquakes, right? This IS Los Angeles. Whole lotta shaking going on.

And you think the army hasnt noticed you have one of their warheads?

Theyve lost track of dozens. In China and Africa. One more wont make much of a difference. Besides, plenty of people in the government know who I am and what I intend to do. Theyve been surveilling me for months, but they have done nothing. The spies are hoping for an increase in their budgets. Most of those bureaucrats in Washington and Chicago cant stand California anyway. Tell them Los Angeles is going to fall into the ocean and theyd applaud.

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1980 The Year the Past Disappeared: A Novel

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