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Mind Over Matter
The Pains: Mind Over Matter: Volume Black
Say you’re the Savior, Fred Christ. Would you want your frozen head to be reanimated in 1984? The world is going all to hell. Wars loom. Earthquakes strike with increasing regularity; weather patterns are awry; birds are in the water, fish in the air. Old ways wither; old languages are lost as the memories of their last surviving speakers dissolve like cobwebs. Something rotten this way comes. Governments collapse around the globe, leaving only the Party to rule over all. In a prison cell, a madman spins theories of the mind, conjuring his own freedom. In cars and bars and shopping malls, proles obediently obey the insipid pronouncements of Big Brother, Ronald Reagan, and Oliver North that emanate from the irony machine they call the telescreen. In a subzero laboratory, a scientist stares at an imprisoned god. And in a lonely bare room in a vast and nearly empty monastery, a young novice studies and prays and contemplates the idea of simple goodness, trying to comprehend chaos. For which his only reward will be the pure torment of The Pains In a world that is part Orwell, part Cheney, and part who knows what, a holy man tries to find a way to give meaning to his suffering, and perhaps thereby save us all. With The Pains, John Damien Sundman, an eigenvector of the author of Acts of the Apostles and the editor of Cheap Complex Devices, has created his most disturbing and most hopeful vision yet. Cheeseburger Brown, the creator of Simon of Space brings this universe to life with twelve vivid illustrations. In a deranged world, what will save science or faith? Open your mind and — Fred willing — you will find release from your own pains within these pages.
- GenresFiction
120 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 17, 2008
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35 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 10, 2009
That I wrote it notwithstanding, I think it's a great book. I hope you'll check it out.
July 9, 2009
Not the most elegant prose, but as always a compelling narrative from Sundman. This one is pretty geek heavy with flavors of higher math, hypothetical future biology, and digital design. All of this coupled with religion. There is a small twist at the end that I love and makes me laugh. In fact, his whole religion concept makes me laugh -- priests walking around with nooses around their necks, a Christ figure that's actually a severed head, and the turnover of Christ figures. Religion mixed with politics and power...pretty sounds like status quo to me.
May 30, 2009
There's no reason not to read this book - as science fiction literature goes it is short, easy to read, entertaining, funny, and has terrific pictures that thoroughly support the story. You can even read it for free online at the author's Website.
Except that the book is deeply disturbing (in a surprisingly hopeful way), and too deeply relevant for the beach.
With Sundman's cinematic staging and elegant descriptions, The Pains feels like a cherished small movie on the scale of Liquid Sky or Memento. If the Cohen brothers made it, it would be the kind that makes you want to see another of theirs instead of the kind that doesn't.
Like these film stories, Sundman poses a number of trick questions:
Would a savior want his disembodied head to be reanimated by science?
What if cheap-parlor trick science was just a little more advanced, and Americans accepting of totalitarianism for just a little bit longer prior to the Cheney administration? Would we have had Orwell's vision in 1984's America?
How god-awful was 1980's popular music?
What if you, dear reader, had faith? Or do you?
What is the scope of science, religion, and politics?
Sundman's tight prose answers all but the last. While the neo-cons may be gone (for now), the balance between personal vs messianic science, religion, and politics is just as precarious as ever.
Except that the book is deeply disturbing (in a surprisingly hopeful way), and too deeply relevant for the beach.
With Sundman's cinematic staging and elegant descriptions, The Pains feels like a cherished small movie on the scale of Liquid Sky or Memento. If the Cohen brothers made it, it would be the kind that makes you want to see another of theirs instead of the kind that doesn't.
Like these film stories, Sundman poses a number of trick questions:
Would a savior want his disembodied head to be reanimated by science?
What if cheap-parlor trick science was just a little more advanced, and Americans accepting of totalitarianism for just a little bit longer prior to the Cheney administration? Would we have had Orwell's vision in 1984's America?
How god-awful was 1980's popular music?
What if you, dear reader, had faith? Or do you?
What is the scope of science, religion, and politics?
Sundman's tight prose answers all but the last. While the neo-cons may be gone (for now), the balance between personal vs messianic science, religion, and politics is just as precarious as ever.
July 30, 2014
An amazing end to an awesome three book series, Mind Over Matter! This book is set just after 1984 (before the Acts of the Apostles book, the first in the series). I know I loved George Orwell's book 1984 and this book makes many references to it. You can get this book for free at unglue.it. I "thanked" Mr Sundman for the book, which is unglue.its way of paying the author for the book. You can also get it for your Kindle or Nook or maybe even your iPad (sorry, haven't checked iBooks yet). While you do have to pay for those, it's the same price as unglue.its suggested "thank you" amount.
All in all, it's a wonderful book. If you haven't read the first two books in the Mind Over Matter series, they're free too. Acts of the Apostles and Cheap Complex Devices
All in all, it's a wonderful book. If you haven't read the first two books in the Mind Over Matter series, they're free too. Acts of the Apostles and Cheap Complex Devices
June 22, 2017
Just read it
Fred commands you. And it's your salvation on the line, after all, not mine, not Oliver North's, not Ronald Reagan's. You'll see.
Fred commands you. And it's your salvation on the line, after all, not mine, not Oliver North's, not Ronald Reagan's. You'll see.
October 24, 2019
SF novella from 2008 set in 1985 previews today's dysfunctional society
The novella is the sweet spot in SF for me. Short stories had their day, but relatively few are widely published anymore. The full novel form has some superstar authors, but I feel the need for less filling fare more often.
A novella needs a concept, a narrative well told and a hook to the present.
John Sundman gives us all three in The Pains: A alternate reality portrait of the early 80s dystopia, two relatable protagonists, a suite of finely drawn peripheral characters and a flowing journey to an unknown but seemingly inevitable destination.
He must also have second sight. Written in 2008, he describes a society that seems halfway where we are today in 2019 and where we could end up in the not very distant future.
Go for it!
The novella is the sweet spot in SF for me. Short stories had their day, but relatively few are widely published anymore. The full novel form has some superstar authors, but I feel the need for less filling fare more often.
A novella needs a concept, a narrative well told and a hook to the present.
John Sundman gives us all three in The Pains: A alternate reality portrait of the early 80s dystopia, two relatable protagonists, a suite of finely drawn peripheral characters and a flowing journey to an unknown but seemingly inevitable destination.
He must also have second sight. Written in 2008, he describes a society that seems halfway where we are today in 2019 and where we could end up in the not very distant future.
Go for it!
November 21, 2010
The Pains, John Sundman’s third novel, continues an experimental jag started with Cheap Complex Devices. There is an experimentation with media – it’s illustrated by Cheeseburger Brown. There is an experimentation with setting – a monastic SF alternate history sequel to 1984 not being obvious to most. This is rarely a bad thing in SF, though, and a protaganist both electrical engineer and monk does seem a particularly Sundmanite choice. That given, the choice of a fairly straight narrative was probably wise; there is not so much of the stylistic trickiness of CCD here, at least on the surface. It’s a successful experiment, for the most part. Part of the excitement of experiments is their potential for failure (and contradicting a hypothesis is itself an important result), but this book is very much an “aha, neat” rather than “seemed like a good idea” or “where are my eyebrows”.
The Pains has a real Philip K. Dick-ian quality, an intoxicating blend of readability and the everyday weirdness of an unstable reality. It’s a short book, and to me it felt too short. It does feel short the way many good books feel too short – you wish you could spend more time with them. But it also feels amputated, specifically at the end. Abbreviated by force. Spoilers follow.
Sundman is not averse to formal structures even in seemingly digestible narratives. He’s commented in other forums that in Acts of the Apostles, on the surface a Tom Clancy-style thriller, a key scene between the Nick Aubrey and Monty Meekman quite strictly follows the form of Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. I wonder if there is another formal device being used in The Pains. Given the parallel Christian, indeed Catholic, elements, I was reminded of the Stations of the Cross. It's pretty easy to find contact points between these and chapters in The Pains, but The Pains has only ten chapters. There are fourteen stations of the cross.
I know it’s easy to OD on analysis, the whole Baconian thing. Perhaps it wasn’t a deliberate strategy, or there was a different model, especially given screen time is mostly split between Norman and Xristi, rather than focused intently on one of them. Norman has time for redemption; the stations of the cross end in Jesus’ tomb.
On the other hand, the Christian mythos is potent stuff, with extensively documented and long lasting effects. Combining it with Dick Cheney’s frozen head should produce a highly reactive sublimate. These intertwinings might just be another side effect of Sundman’s experimental theology.
The Pains has a real Philip K. Dick-ian quality, an intoxicating blend of readability and the everyday weirdness of an unstable reality. It’s a short book, and to me it felt too short. It does feel short the way many good books feel too short – you wish you could spend more time with them. But it also feels amputated, specifically at the end. Abbreviated by force. Spoilers follow.
Sundman is not averse to formal structures even in seemingly digestible narratives. He’s commented in other forums that in Acts of the Apostles, on the surface a Tom Clancy-style thriller, a key scene between the Nick Aubrey and Monty Meekman quite strictly follows the form of Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. I wonder if there is another formal device being used in The Pains. Given the parallel Christian, indeed Catholic, elements, I was reminded of the Stations of the Cross. It's pretty easy to find contact points between these and chapters in The Pains, but The Pains has only ten chapters. There are fourteen stations of the cross.
I know it’s easy to OD on analysis, the whole Baconian thing. Perhaps it wasn’t a deliberate strategy, or there was a different model, especially given screen time is mostly split between Norman and Xristi, rather than focused intently on one of them. Norman has time for redemption; the stations of the cross end in Jesus’ tomb.
On the other hand, the Christian mythos is potent stuff, with extensively documented and long lasting effects. Combining it with Dick Cheney’s frozen head should produce a highly reactive sublimate. These intertwinings might just be another side effect of Sundman’s experimental theology.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews