No, not like the Necronomicon or The King In Yellow; more like The Return of the Turner Diaries.
I’m torn. This looks like it could be a “Plan 9 From Outer Space” of SF novels, on the other hand, it’s almost certainly a racist, extremist rant. I want to get it for the “traffic accident fascination” of this book, but I don’t want to give this guy my money. I’m not sure which urge is stronger.
Hold Back This Day is the book in question. Since the author’s site takes 10 minutes to load, I’m reprinting his advertising blurb below (Since it’s the same blurb that’s on SFSite.com and a few others, I assume that reprinting his advertising is covered by fair use):
(Sorry about the all-caps thing, that’s how it is on his page)
I mean, with writing like this (SKOOLPLEX? GLOBAL-WIDE POLICE STATE?) it’ll be a great rant-book. And it doesn’t only sound like pure cheese, we’re at limburger level here. At the same time, I don’t want to give him money. I doubt this’ll turn up used, as I have a sneaking suspicion that his publisher “Publish America” is a very, very, veeeeery [sub]small[/sub] press.
I might note, that if you search on Altavista for “Ward Kendall” and “Hold Back This Day” your first link will be to a David Duke/White Pride site.
I want this book but I don’t think I want to support this guy’s writing career.
Could you ask your library to order it for you? (Use someone else’s library card or a phony ID, of course.)
Now I know why The Turner Diaries came up in a censorship discussion on a book list awhile back. I’d never heard of it before then. I thought they were talking about The Confessions of Nat Turner and I wondered “what the hell?”
Aw, go ahead and buy it. Read it, rant (here, of course), and then mail it back to the publisher with appropriate comments.
I wouldn’t buy it. I have an aversion to paying people for being idiots. Maybe you can find it on the web somewhere? Barring that, if it were me, I’d have to grit my teeth and wait until the bastard dies to buy the book, so that I’m not giving him my money.
See if you can find a used copy…that way the idjit doesn’t get any royalties. There are some authors that I will only buy in new books, even if I’ve already bought one new copy of that book. Other authors are purely “used book” buys.
Please don’t buy this train-wreck. It won’t even be as good (in the bad way) as you think it will be. It can’t be. If you’re trying to imagine what it would be like, the Mighty Fenrian Intellect (MFI) will be trained on the idea. The MFI could come up with better stuff than the hack who actually wrote this…thing.
Oh, I know…you and Scylla could collaborate on your own “chilling tale of the last white people on Earth”. Just a thought.
A couple of comments: Auntie Pam I figure I have more disposible money than my library. If someone’s gonna waste their money on this crap, it should be me.
Jenericho and Lynn, as far as I can tell, “Publish America” is a print-on-demand outfit. If I don’t order a copy then there’s one less copy printed. This makes it extremely unlikely that it’ll show up in a used bookstore too.
And given the piddley amount of copies that they use as thresholds for royalties hikes, I actually stand a slight chance of being the one to give this guy a raise
**
Sorry to disagree RDD, but I have a certain low taste for this sort of garbage. I’ve read crap like this and had a ball tearing it apart. I suspect (given the excerpts of his other novel) that it’ll be exactly as bad as I think it’ll be.
I’m trying to rationalize this buy promising to write a long, “avoid this” review afterwards in the hopes of stopping someone from buying it. But if I’m honest, a review’ll give it more publicity than I suspect it’ll get otherwise.