Leonard Seet's New Novel: Sharper Mind Darker Dreams

 Excelsior Publishing will be releasing Leonard Seet’s latest novel Sharper Mind Darker Dreams in November 2020.

From the author of Magnolias in Paradise comes Sharper Mind Darker Dreams, a tour de force science fiction thriller of a self without a past, a tale of lost memory and elusive love in a dystopian wasteland. A man loses his memory and must travel through a bizarre world to find his identity. He navigates among layers of dreams, synthesizing them into his reality. Through prose that evokes an eerie atmosphere, Seet blends neurobiology and AI and twists the meaning of being alive, to create a journey into human consciousness and psychologically designed reality.

Sharper Mind Darker Dreams is a 150,000-word sci-fi and the first in a potential series. In prose that evokes an eerie atmosphere, the author blends neurobiology and AI and twists the meaning of being alive, to create a journey into human consciousness and psychologically designed reality. As in Tad Williams’ Otherland, a man loses his memory and must travel through a bizarre world to find his identity. But like Douglas Hall in Daniel F. Galouye's Simulacron-3, the protagonist questions whether his world is real. Instead of roaming through several layers of simulations, here the man navigates among layers of dreams, synthesizing them into his world. And like Joe Chip in Philip K. Dick's Ubik, he continues to live after having died, but instead of being suspended in “half-life,” he lives as a “half-man.” Science fiction for readers who enjoy complex characters and mesmerizing writing as much as intricate plots. 

Leonard Seet is the author of the novels Meditation On Space-Time and Magnolias in Paradise. His short fiction have appeared in Duende Literary Journal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and Pilcrow & Dagger. The story “Black-Naped Oriole in Hokkaido Snow” was a podcast winner at Pilcrow & Daggar and he received honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Competition for “Don't Be Afraid of the Black Rain.”

Journey to the End of the Night

In Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline jabs at war, colonialism, the U.S., the medical profession and anything that comes along the way. His writing style, its coarse language and cynical humor, reflects his irreverence toward norms, and animates his contempt for society and pessimism toward the human condition. The book starts like Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, hammering at the futility of war, where wide-eyed youths waste their lives fighting for the ambitions of bureaucrats and return with disillusion, wrecked health, chronic unemployment and alienation from society. When our antihero Ferdinand Bardamu goes to Africa, we feel like reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which exposes cruelty and inhumanity in colonial outposts and multinational enterprises’ exploiting the natives for profit. Bardamu’s travel to the U.S. and struggle to stay alive remind us of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, where the business conglomerates exploit cheap laborers, squeezing every ounce of life from them, to maximize profit and shareholder value.  In our antihero’s return to France, we recall Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and any number of Honoré de Balzac’s works, with the masses struggling to eke out a living. In the novel, the characters lie, steal, and even kill to survive and live anyway they could. It’s rats fighting each other for scum.

Night in Paris

As the title indicates, our antihero, and his friends and acquaintances, journeys through the dark night of life, in the hope that the end would come soon and the darkness would end. Toward the end of the novel, his friend Robinson, after all his suffering and failure and disillusions, chooses death to end this night. This novel, based on Céline’s life, reveals his disgust for society, government, and humanity.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Herman Koch's The Dinner

Some readers complain that none of the characters in Herman Koch's The Dinner is likable, but a good story need not have likable ones as along as they are interesting. And the narrator Paul Lohman is certainly interesting, though unbalanced and even creepy. Through this unreliable narrator, Herman Koch reveals the dark secret behind the two respectable middleclass families: those of Paul and his brother Serge. And the high-class restaurant in which they dine sharpens the boys' atrocity and Paul's madness.

At first, we empathize with Paul about his brother being a bourgeois snob and a sleazy politician, but we eventually learned of his violence and insanity and the brother is revealed to be a better man, though less than likeable. It is this use of the unreliable narrator to uncover not only the boys' atrocities but also the narrator's madness that makes the story interesting. Yes, the boys' killing the homeless woman is horrendous, but Paul's and Claire's abetting their son to eliminate Serge's adopted son in order to hide the original crime, that is malicious and even evil.

Guinea Fowl (Photo: Ewan Munro. London, UK)

Though Paul Lohman is interesting, Koch's peeling off layers of facade to reveal the dark soul within this man is what pulls me to the book. First person narration certainly helps to confine our view to Paul's and forces us to try to sympathize with his thoughts and actions, but only up to a certain point. As our view begin to expand and we learn of the truth, our feelings turn from sympathy to disgust. It reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day where we keep learning bits of the butler's biases and idiosyncrasies after each page.

The Church of St. Nicholas, Amsterdam (Photo: Swimmerguy269)

The Dinner is an indictment of the bourgeois lifestyle, the preoccupation with appearances, and the resulting skeletons hidden in the proverbial closet. The humorous style lends greater impact to the enormity of the dark secrets and the sick minds. Sure, there aren't any likeable characters in the story, least of all the restaurant manager, but the story is enjoyable.

Herman Koch

Release of Leonard Seet’s novel Magnolias in Paradise

Excelsior Publishing will be releasing Leonard Seet’s latest novel Magnolias in Paradise in Fall 2016.

Ernst arrives at the Paradise train station with fifty-thousand dollars to ransom his sweetheart, and while looking among the crowd for the young man with a magnolia, a beggar seizes his bag of cash and escapes through the revolving door. Chasing after the rascal, he slams into his contact--his girlfriend's lover in town. Now, he must beat his love-rival to the money and rescue her before the deadline.

Magnolias in Paradise (252 pp., tpb, $14.95) is a 96,000-word crime novel and the first in a potential series. As in Larry Brown’s Father and Son, good confronts evil in a southern town. And as in Joe R. Lansdale’s Cold in July, an ordinary man gets sucked into a conspiracy, with psychopaths terrorizing a small town and FBI agents going after a corrupt sheriff. In the end, the man must take the law into his hands. But in this case, ending in tragedy. Here, I combined Will Christopher Baer’s surreal settings and mentally unstable villains, with Brian Evenson’s literary minimalism and heroes cursing their knowledge.

“Leonard Seet brings his intelligence and wit and gifts as a writer to a broader audience in Magnolias in Paradise in a gritty, realistic novel. He uses a narrative style which brings you the perspective of the players in this grim game of hide-and-seek reminiscent of the narrative technique of As I Lay Dying and Charming Billy… Mainstream audiences will appreciate the intelligence of the narrative of this book in this genre, which is so often short-changed by lesser lights just out to make a buck. Seet has reinvented himself as a writer in his evolution from his deeply rich, engaging and inspirational books about spirituality to the rough ride on the mean streets of Magnolias in Paradise. If you are into this genre, then you’ll definitely be engaged by this novel.” -David Lentz, author, Bloomsday: the Bostoniad

Leonard Seet is the author of the novel Meditation On Space-Time and the non-fiction The Spiritual Life. His articles and short fiction have appeared in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Banana Writers and Pilcrow & Dagger. He learned the art of writing from Brando Skyhorse and Tim Johnston through George Washington University's Jennie McKean Moore Fiction Workshop, which is by application.

Magnolias in Paradise is available in most brick-and-mortar and online bookstores.

Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle

In a world where the Axis powers won W.W.II, Germany rules Europe and Japan Asia and the Pacific and they split the United States. Then, as in the Cold War, Germany and Japan rival for world domination. But the playground is the U.S. rather than Germany. The Man in the High Castle takes place in Japan-controlled San Francisco and the neutral Rocky Mountain States between the Pacific States of America and the East Coast of America. Germany plans to subdue Japan by creating an incident in the Rocky Mountain States, but a faction within the government sends a spy to warn Japan. In this world Germany’s final solution in Africa wipes out the continent and the country continues to persecute the Jews throughout the world, the remnants fleeing to the Rocky Mountain States and the Pacific States of America. The I Ching, the oracle that has replaced Christianity and the horoscope in the Pacific State of America, guides the masses in their decisions and through the ancient Chinese scripts answers their questions about life and death and the vagaries of living. This ancient scripture consumes the people’s imagination. In The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick created a world where the power players have shifted roles but familiar brinkmanship and subterfuge remain.

The World in The Man in the High Castle

Within the novel is another book, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen, the man in the high castle. This novel within a novel delineates an alternative history to the one above. What if Germany and Japan lost W.W.II? Not a Cold War between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Not the victory of the communists in China. Rather, The Nationalist defeats the Communists in China, establishes a right-wing regime and allies with the U.S. The British retains most of its empire and continues to expand its dominance. Indeed, a Cold War develops between the U.S. and the U.K. with the latter eventually dominating the former. What is interesting is that this alternative to an alternative isn’t our history. So even with Allies victory, many scenarios can play out.

Philip K. Dick

Dick’s comment on the Nazis is thought provoking.

“They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate — confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.”

The Man in the High Castle is not just science fiction, but a thought-provoking look into the nature of humanity. Of course, as with other works of Dick, the cultural nuances and biases of the 60’s rear their heads throughout the novel. Nevertheless, a novel worth reading.

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We

We came before Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984, and Yevgeny Zamyatin proved himself a master of the dystopian novel so popular today. The novel tells of the protagonist D-503 coming-of-age, becoming more and more aware of his desires, imagination and individuality, until the Operation returns him to the collective.

In We, the One-State removes its citizens’ individuality by assigning alphanumerical designations to them and so it dehumanizes them more than the governments of 1984 and Brave New World their citizens. The mathematical-speak throughout the narrative adds to the sense of alienation. For example, the spaceship is called the Integral. “Integrating the grand equation of the universe: yes. Taming a wild zigzag along a tangent, toward the asymptote, into a straight line: yes.” This is poetic science.

D-503 dreads the square root of –1 because the imaginary number doesn’t relate to any quantity in real life and it symbolizes the imagination, as opposed to facts and analyses that one can grasp and control.

Throughout the journal, D-503 mentions Frederick W Taylor and his Scientific Taylorism in which he applies mathematics to production (ex. linear programming to achieve operation efficiency) and Behaviorism to management (X style of management). The One-State guarantees its citizens’ “happiness” by removing their desires and imaginations but turning them into means of production and cogs in the bureaucratic machine, no longer humans but robots that follow the Table of Hours and repeat the tasks day after day.

Yevgeny Zamyatin reveals to us a possible future where efficiency and precision trump creativity and emotions, a future that haunts us to this day.

James Ellroy's L. A. Confidential

No redemption in James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential

More corrupted cops, conniving DAs, ruthless gangsters, psychopathic killers. Less truth and even less justice in the City of the Angels. Welcome to the world of James Ellroy. More setups, more cover-ups, more fall guys, more hush-hushes. Likeable characters? Not in this novel. Heroes and good guys? Sure, plenty in the news (besides here at Hush-Hush). Just don’t look in the closet or underneath the carpet. Redemption? Only if you’ve been living under a rock. This is La La Land, Hollywood Land, Dream-a-Dreamland.
The main event: Night Owl Shooting, 1824 Cherokee, 6 dead in food locker, gore, mutilations, blood two-feet deep. Spotted: purple ‘48-’50 Merc Coupe outside the shop. Make: three black young men discharging shotguns into the air in Griffith Park. Fall guys for a cover-up.

L.A. City Hall

Lieutenant Detective Ed Exley--ambitious, straight shooter, son of real estate magnate and former police detective--intends to solve the case, his meal ticket up the ladder to captain, then inspector. Eclipse his dead brother: competing with the dead, a sure loss, to seek his father’s approval, the great man who solved the famous Atherson case (hush-hush on the cover up). Never mind Ed faked his heroism during W.W.II to get a medal. Very hush-hush.

Officer Wendell (Bud) White--speaks with his fists, speaks with fists again before speaking with his mouth, watched his father beat his mother to death while chained to a bed, then watched her rot--intends to solve a string of prostitute killings: his obsession, his search for redemption. If only his brain could react before his fists do. Not in this novel, not in Ellroy’s world.

Sergeant Jack Vincennes aka Trashcan Jack--celebrity cop, self-interested, killed an innocent couple while on dope, but hush-hush--investigates the making and distribution of pornography. Sets up the D.A. for a scandal during a campaign so his friend wins the election, in exchange for favors. Feeds dirt to Hush-Hush for sin-sational news (thanks, Jack).

Disneyland

Likeable they aren’t, but colorful and struggling for their souls. And losing. In the end, they go to hell, literally or figuratively. You may want them redeemed, but remember, this is the world of James Ellroy.
All the slurs against blacks, Mexicans and gays, all the blood and gore for realism, they could be too much. Sure, James Ellroy was building a canvass: pornography, prostitution, heroine trafficking, police extortion, political corruption--a dark portrait of the City of Angels in the 50’s. But the excesses can be a turnoff.

What keeps the readers turning the pages? The plot, the plot, the plot. Multiple cases converge, involving the cast of criminals--cops, gangsters, production cast, psychopaths. Main plot and subplots interweave to form a tapestry of crime and sin and corruption and conspiracy. One of the most satisfying plots in a mystery/crime novel, complex enough to keep the reader from dosing.

James Ellroy (Photo: Mark Coggins)

Just too bad about not having a shootout between Ed Exley and Bud White. The quick and the dead. Would’ve been the pivotal scene.

Still, all the details that’s fit to print, in a fast-paced writing style, minimalism to the Nth order. Yes, style, style, style, either you love it or you hate it. Or you love it but hate it. But it fits well with the plot and theme.
And lad, even after Trashcan Jack kicks the bucket and Bud White becomes a cripple, your beloved Captain Dudley Smith is alive and well though he couldn’t become inspector. Containment. Contained. Wink, wink.

Remember, dear reader: you heard it here first, off-the-record, on the Q.T., and very Hush Hush.

Ryu Murakami's Coin Locker Babies

Their mothers left them to die in coin lockers when they were born, but they survived. Kiku and Hashi grew up together in a foster home as brothers, but must deal with their own demons.

Kiku becomes a pole vaulter and eventually kills his mother, landing him in jail. But he escapes and goes to the Garagi Island to search for a substance call “DATURA,” which he would use to destroy Tokyo.

Hashi becomes a bisexual singer and rises to stardom on the heel of Kiku’s killing his mother. But the trauma of surviving the coin locker continues to haunt him and it destroys his career. He kills his pregnant wife and journeys into a surreal world, and he couldn't escape the nightmare.

In Coin Locker Babies, Ryu Murakami ventures into the fringes of society. And Toxitown is a symbol of the darkness in the protagonists and an entire society. Kiku hears the murmuring, perhaps recalling his mother’s beating while he was in the womb. And Hashi believes he has swallowed a fly with a human face and he must kill to continue his success. Two broken individuals reflecting Toxitown reflecting society. But we would find Toxitown not just in Tokyo but also in New York, London, Paris, etc. Murakami’s graphic description of its mutated denizens and their activities matches the story’s theme and his commentary of contemporary society. He means to shock the readers, and moviegoers, and he succeeds. The kid with the hole in his head is only the beginning.

The surrealist, and dreamlike, ending blunts the horror but leaves the reader wondering whether Kuku will use “DATURA” on Tokyo and whether Hashi has become insane. Still, whatever happens, Murakami makes his point and the reader will recall Toxitown’s landscape, the crocodile’s death in the highway, Kiku shooting his mother on live TV, Hashi stabbing his wife in the shower, and all the while D, the producer, looking to sell more and more of Hashi’s records. Not everyone will be able to stomach the book, but if a reader can pass the first paragraph, then he or she will be ready to enter Murakami’s dark world and glimpse into contemporary society’s tormented souls.

The Possibility of an Island: Michel Houellebecq's The Brave New World

Book Review of The Possibility of an Island

The species have reached immortality. Through cloning and the propagation of historical memories. But the time of the humans is over. It is the age of the neo-humans, clones without joy and grief, without neurosis, without community, without sexual desires. Only a lifetime of reviewing and of analyzing the life of the human from which their DNA came. A lifetime of isolation, except for a pet. A lifetime of pseudo-touch through electronic communications. A lifetime of reflection and contemplation.

When the grief, the denial, the struggle to remain virile and attractive dominated the aging man or woman, the life of the neo-human seemed heavenly.  And no wonder the creator of these neo-humans chose to eliminate the neurosis associated with aging.

Neo-humans live without joy; and they die without grief. They don’t need food, only minerals and water. A superior race more suitable for survival. Living in a post-apocalyptic world. What does it mean when a few decided to leave their isolation, to end their immortality, to trek across the dried ocean surface, in search of a legendary community?

Would you choose to be human or neo-human?

The Possibility of an Island is a sad, sad depiction of the possibility, or impossibility, of humanity. Without youth and sexual virility, what is man or woman? When our mind and body decline, what do we make of life? Is a lifetime of tranquility more preferable to the fluctuations between joy and grief? What kind of Omega Point are we moving toward?