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More books by Pola Oloixarac
Description
Argentinian literary star Pola Oloixarac's wildly ambitious second novel investigates humanity’s quest for knowledge and control, hurtling from the 19th century mania for scientific classification to present-day mass surveillance and the next steps in human evolution.
Canary Islands, 1882: Caught in the 19th-century ...
Argentinian literary star Pola Oloixarac’s wildly ambitious second novel investigates humanity’s quest for knowledge and control, hurtling from the 19th century mania for scientific classification to present-day mass surveillance and the next steps in human evolution.
Canary Islands, 1882: Caught in the 19th-century wave of scientific classification, explorer and plant biologist Niklas Bruunis researches Crissia pallida, a species alleged to have hallucinogenic qualities capable of eliminating the psychic limits between one human mind and another.
Buenos Aires, 1983: Born to a white Argentinian anthropologist and a black Brazilian engineer, Cassio comes of age with the Internet, and demonstrates the skills and personality that will make him one of the first great Argentine hackers.
The southern Argentinian techno-hub of Bariloche, 2024: Piera, on the same research group as Cassio, studies human DNA. When the Estromatoliton project comes to fruition, the Argentine government will be able to track every movement of its citizens without their knowledge or consent, using censors that identify DNA at a distance.
In a dazzling novel of towering ambition, Oloixarac proves that true power resides in the world’s most deeply shadowed interstices, as beautiful and horrifying as dark constellations themselves.
Media
“One of the first classics of Spanish literature in 21 years.”
—El Mundo
“Pola Oloixarac is one of the great writers of the Internet, the only country larger than Argentina.”
—Joshua Cohen, author of Book of Numbers
“This wild anthropological ride blends political satire, psychedelic sexuality, and cyberpunk themes.”
–Publisher's Weekly on Dark Constellations
“This genre-defying novel blends science fiction with cyberpunk with naturalism to end up with something utterly original...Oloixarac is a massive, mysterious talent.”
-Kirkus, Starred Review on Dark Constellations
“Intriguing and terrifying...[the] 19th century interludes that thread through the novel, a fever dream of sex and hallucinogenics and weird experiments, contrast beautifully against the straightlaced prose of Cassio and Piera’s story.”
–Locus Magazine on Dark Constellations
“Oloixarac toggles between severity and satire with Borgesian ease, yet her bleak visions of a society so easily conquered by a small number of amoral innovators is eerily plausible, and captured with an evocative lyricism.”
–The A.V. Club on Dark Constellations
“Dark Constellations delivers exactly what you want in high-end science fiction—a deep thinker of a novel with a wide-eyed gusto for getting weird.”
–Southwest Review
“Weird science abounds in this concise yet sprawling novel...Oloixarac riffs on science as rebellion, the ways that technology can be used to both prop up and dismantle power, and the fine line between communal bliss and authoritarian groupthink.”
–Words Without Borders on Dark Constellations
“A time-jumping, post-human, science-fiction fever dream...Oloixarac forgoes linear narrative in favor of impressionistic sketches of the colonial wreckage of the Americas, post-industrial environmental collapse, and mythical hallucinogenic plants that 'break down the barriers between one species and another.'”