Stealworks: The Graphic Details of John Yates

by G.A. Matiasz

California, 2007. It's not just sex, drugs and rock'n'roll! "The storm black Hooligans took Van Ness, but never made the jog off to the park, instead, they massed, some one hundred thousand strong, up to the hastily formed police blockade on Van Ness and Grove, then east back around on Market. They stopped in fact. March peace monitors, realizing what was happening, evaporated from around the autonomous columns to beat hasty retreats up Grove, Fell, Oak and Page with the march's stragglers. People pulled on masks, bandanas, ski masks and balaklavas. Sunglasses hid eyes. Adrenaline once more raced through Greg, somewhere in the middle of that black mass, as he pulled up his own 'kerchief. He watched a gauntly beautiful girl, a rare, anti-war Null, put her large black scarf over her gold electroplated cheek plates, before putting on shades in synch with hers..." End Time Notes on the Apocalypse. Civil War rages across the former Soviet Union. Red hot embers of that conflict are spreading tensions around the globe. The United States is fighting a sophisticated, high tech counterinsurgency war in Southern Mexico, against a popular revolution claiming the tradition of Zapata. A military draft has been reinstated, and a strong anti-war movement flourishes on American streets. The city of Oakland rises in class anger and becomes the 21st century's Paris Commune. In Alabaster, a small town north of San Francisco, the novel's protagonist, Greg Kovinski, and a group of anti-war college students gain possession of enough bomb grade riemanium to build a nuclear weapon several times more powerful than the one detonated over Nagasaki. Against the backdrop of civil unrest, Greg and his friends struggle to "do the right thing" with their deadly power.

Genres: Fiction

136 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1994

About the author

Born in 1952, G.A. Matiasz was a late hippie and an early punk. He began self-publishing at 17 with a high school underground newpaper, and burned his draft card at age 18. Essays from his publication Point-Blank/San Diego’s Daily Impulse have been reprinted in Semiotext[e] USA, the Utne Reader, and War Resisters’ League’s short-lived youth publication SPEW! He has also published essays in Against The Wall, the New Indicator, Draft NOtices, and the San Diego Newsline. His first science fiction novel End Time: Notes on the Apocalypse was published by AK Press and was reprinted in Portuguese by a Brazilian publisher, Conrad Livros. He lives in San Francisco, where he wrote a monthly column of news analysis and political commentary for Maximum Rocknroll under the name “Lefty” Hooligan. 1% Free is published through his business 62 Mile Press.

Reviews

[ottilie · Rating 3 out of 5]

love a good mixture of social commentary and disturbing realism