Dear Cyborgs: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
One of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Favorite Fiction Books of 2017, a Literary Hub Staff Favorite Book of 2017, and one of BOMB Magazine's "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Selections.
"Wondrous . . . [A] sense of the erratic and tangential quality of everyday life—even if it's displaced into a bizarre, parallel world—drifts off the page, into the world you see, after reading Dear Cyborgs." —Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
In a small Midwestern town, two Asian American boys bond over their outcast status and a mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternative or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes ponder modern society during their time off. Between black-ops missions and rescuing hostages, they swap stories of artistic malaise and muse on the seemingly inescapable grip of market economics.
Gleefully toying with the conventions of the novel, Dear Cyborgs weaves together the story of a friendship's dissolution with a provocative and timely meditation on protest. Through a series of linked monologues, a lively cast of characters explores narratives of resistance—protest art, eco-terrorists, Occupy squatters, pyromaniacal militants—and the extent to which any of these can truly withstand and influence the cold demands of contemporary capitalism. All the while, a mysterious cybernetic book of clairvoyance beckons, and trusted allies start to disappear.
Entwining comic-book villains with cultural critiques, Eugene Lim's Dear Cyborgs is a fleet-footed literary exploration of power, friendship, and creativity. Ambitious and knowing, it combines detective pulps, subversive philosophy, and Hollywood chase scenes, unfolding like the composites and revelations of a dream.
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Eugene Lim. (2017). Dear Cyborgs: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Eugene Lim. 2017. Dear Cyborgs: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Eugene Lim, Dear Cyborgs: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Eugene Lim. Dear Cyborgs: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
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- bioText: Eugene Lim is the author of Fog & Car, The Strangers, and Dear Cyborgs. His writing has appeared in Fence, the Denver Quarterly, Little Star, Dazed, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. He is the founder and managing editor of Ellipsis Press and works as a librarian in a high school. He lives in Queens, New York.
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One of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Favorite Fiction Books of 2017, a Literary Hub Staff Favorite Book of 2017, and one of BOMB Magazine's "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Selections.
"Wondrous . . . [A] sense of the erratic and tangential quality of everyday life—even if it's displaced into a bizarre, parallel world—drifts off the page, into the world you see, after reading Dear Cyborgs." —Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
In a small Midwestern town, two Asian American boys bond over their outcast status and a mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternative or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes ponder modern society during their time off. Between black-ops missions and rescuing hostages, they swap stories of artistic malaise and muse on the seemingly inescapable grip of market economics.
Gleefully toying with the conventions of the novel, Dear Cyborgs weaves together the story of a friendship's dissolution with a provocative and timely meditation on protest. Through a series of linked monologues, a lively cast of characters explores narratives of resistance—protest art, eco-terrorists, Occupy squatters, pyromaniacal militants—and the extent to which any of these can truly withstand and influence the cold demands of contemporary capitalism. All the while, a mysterious cybernetic book of clairvoyance beckons, and trusted allies start to disappear.
Entwining comic-book villains with cultural critiques, Eugene Lim's Dear Cyborgs is a fleet-footed literary exploration of power, friendship, and creativity. Ambitious and knowing, it combines detective pulps, subversive philosophy, and Hollywood chase scenes, unfolding like the composites and revelations of a dream.- reviews
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- source: Chris Kraus, BOMB
- content: "Dear Cyborgs is a novel of the future. It's surprising, and--while giving despair its full measure--it's surprisingly inspiring. A Bolano-esque labyrinth of shaggy dog stories flow through the narrator, describing the existential and physical conditions of a present in which it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, but it's written in calm and succinct, elegant prose. Lim nails the amnesia of sensory overload perfectly."
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- source: Hua Hsu, The New Yorker's Page Turner
- content: "Wondrous . . . [Lim's] writing is confident and tranquil; he has a knack for making everyday life seem strange--or, in the case of Dear Cyborgs, for making revolution seem like the most natural thing possible. His writing is transfixing from page to page, filled with digressive meditations on small talk and social protest, superheroes, terrorism, the art world, and the status of being marginal . . . There's an intoxicating, whimsical energy on every page. Everything from radical art to political protest gets absorbed into the rhythms of everyday life . . . [A] sense of the erratic and tangential quality of everyday life--even if it's displaced into a bizarre, parallel world--drifts off the page, into the world you see, after reading Dear Cyborgs."
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Starred review from April 24, 2017
Two radically different story lines—one involving a short-lived friendship between two Asian-American boys in the Midwest, the other an ongoing philosophical debate amongst a team of superheroes—are cleverly tied together in this short, sly, unorthodox novel. Opening in suburban Ohio, the first chapter describes the intense bond formed, mostly over comic books, between the narrator and his classmate, Vu, before a sudden move to Chicago separates them. The story’s focus abruptly shifts to the superheroes known as Team Chaos, who dine in Thai restaurants and sing karaoke amidst discussions of Occupy Wall Street, diversification as assimilation, performance artist Tehching Hsieh, activist Richard Aoki, and more. Back in “reality,” the narrator marries, divorces, and has a child, but a sharp awareness of Vu’s absence continues to haunt him, which makes their coincidental reunion (and the retrospective depth that it adds to the superheroes’ conversations) an immensely satisfying closing chapter. Some might find Lim’s (The Strangers) bricolage style too disorienting, but others will revel in how it mirrors the characters’ alienation and confused search for answers. The core relationships, whether they’re between estranged childhood friends or opinionated superhumans, are real and profoundly moving. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.
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April 1, 2017
A childhood friendship marks a young Korean-American man's imagination for life.Lim (The Strangers, 2013, etc.) goes full meta for a twisty, often confusing, but entertaining reflection on art, resistance, heroes, and villains. It begins simply enough, with our nameless narrator describing what it's like to be a preteen of Asian descent living in rural Ohio. The protagonist's most important relationship is with his friend Vu, a cipher who disappears and reappears throughout the novel. In this opening chapter, Lim tosses in a throwaway line that turns out to resonate later: "Here is one lesson that Vu taught me. It maybe doesn't seem on the surface to be about comic books, but it is." But from here, things get pretty weird. Strange and somewhat vague interstitial messages, all starting with the titular greeting "Dear Cyborgs," serve as the pivot between different narratives--"When I say cyborgs, of course I mean us," the book explains later. Following the introduction, Lim abruptly cuts to the narrative of cyberpunk detective Frank Exit, who is hot on the heels of a cultural terrorist named Ms. Mistleto. The hyperkinetic chapters focused on their conflict find the duo chasing each other in far-flung locales from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas. Yet other chapters find the primary narrator, a writer, deep in discussions with his sister and other friends on topics largely centered on the nature of art and protest and ranging from a Bangladeshi artist who commits suicide to the activist and Black Panther Richard Aoki. The villain Ms. Mistleto also becomes a flesh-and-blood character complete with an origin story. "Losing everything does gift you with freedom if nothing else," she explains. "That's a rewrite of a pithier song refrain." It's not always easy to follow; at one point, Lim randomly inserts a chapter from the detective novel that one of the book's fictional characters is reading. But it is eerily reflective of our fractured times, darting from subject to subject with the speed of a mouse click. A colorful meditation on friendship and creation nested within a fictional universe.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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"Wondrous . . . [A] sense of the erratic and tangential quality of everyday life—even if it's displaced into a bizarre, parallel world—drifts off the page, into the world you see, after reading Dear Cyborgs." —Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
In a small Midwestern town, two Asian American boys bond over their outcast status and a mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternative or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes ponder modern society during their time off. Between black-ops missions and rescuing hostages, they swap stories of artistic malaise and muse on the seemingly inescapable grip of market economics.
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