Description
The first major English translation of one of France’s most admired writers, Cosmos Incorporated is a triumph of science fiction–a masterwork of cataclysm, mysticism, and suspense. Fifty years of warfare, disease, and strife have decimated the world’s population. Those who remain are motes in the mind of UniWorld, a superstate that monitors humanity via a vast computer metastructure that catalog everything about everyone on the planet–race, religion, genetic codes, even fantasies. Those who have the means escape UniWorld’s tight control through the Orbital Ring. Though his memory has been wiped clean and his history fabricated in order to pass through UniWorld’s check points, Sergei Diego Plotkin knows his name.And he knows his mission: to murder a man in the city of Grand Junction, a Vegas-like outpost that is home to the private launching pad to the Ring. But this sense of purpose is compromised by random memories that flash through Plotkin’s brain. England and Argentina. The shores of Lake Baikal. And something else. Something indescribable. Now Plotkin is about to meet his maker. As his identity and mission incrementally resurface in his conscious mind, and in the presence of an eerily beautiful woman, Plotkin will soon discover that he has come here not just to kill but to be born. . . . “Like Houellebecq, Dantec takes inspiration from both high and low culture; he is the sort of writer who cites Sun Tzu’s Art of War and the Stooges’ Search and Destroy with equal facility.” –The New York Times “DNA is to Dantec what the swan was to romantic poetry: an invitation to dream. . . . This rocker-writer teleports us into the cyberpunk beyonds of literature. Fasten your seatbelts!” –Le Nouvel Observateur
About the Author
(English version below) Maurice Georges Dantec naît à Grenoble le 13 juin 1959, au sein d'une famille communiste, d'un père journaliste scientifique et d'une mère couturière et employée de service de la Ville d'Ivry-sur-Seine. Il passe la majeure partie de sa prime enfance dans cette ville, en pleine banlieue « rouge ». À l'âge de 5 ans, de violentes crises d'asthme vont éveiller en lui « d’atroces angoisses de mort imminente », dont le souvenir va hanter son adolescence. Ces problèmes de santé et la séparation de ses parents vont le conduire à vivre avec sa mère et sa soeur durant plus de 5 ans dans les Alpes, près de Grenoble, sa ville natale.Après une scolarité brillante, il entre en 1971 au lycée Romain-Rolland, où il rencontre Jean-Bernard Pouy, futur créateur du Poulpe, qui amplifie son attirance déjà bien ancrée envers les littératures "marginales" américaines de l'époque (roman noir, écrits psychédéliques, science-fiction). Très tôt, il devient également un fervent lecteur de Nietzsche et Gilles Deleuze. À la fin des années 1970, une fois le bac en poche, il débute des études de lettres modernes qu'il abandonne rapidement pour fonder les groupes de rock « État d'Urgence », puis "Artefact" . Durant les années 1980, il continue ses aventures musicales tout en travaillant en tant que concepteur-rédacteur dans la publicité.Après avoir créé, en 1991, sans succès, une société de communication multimédia, il décide de se « mettre à écrire sérieusement », tout en travaillant dans une agence de télémarketing. Sur recommandation de Jean-Bernard Pouy, il soumet en 1992 à Patrick Raynal, directeur de la collection Série Noire, un « volumineux et impubliable manuscrit de cinq cents feuillets de deux mille signes » : l’éditeur , qui voit en lui "les signes d'un phénomène littéraire", l’encourage alors vivement à lui livrer un autre ouvrage.Maurice Georges Dantec was born in Grenoble, France on June 13th, 1959, within a communist family. His father was a scientific journalist and his mother a dressmaker, employees in the service of the City of Ivry-sur-Seine. He spent the majority of his childhood in the "red" suburbs. At the age of 5 years, a series of violent asthma attacks awakened his mind with the dreadful anxiety of imminent death, a memory that haunted him into adolescence. These health problems greatly affected him, along with the separation of his parents, and he lived with his mother and sister for more than 5 years in Alps, near Grenoble, his home town.After primary schooling, Maurice entered the secondary school Romain-Rolland in 1971, where he met Jean-Bernard Pouy, future creator of the Octopus, who amplifies his growing attraction towards American "marginal" literature (black novel, mind-expanding writings, science fiction). Very early, he also became a fervent reader of Nietzsche and Giles Deleuze. At the end of 1970’s, once the receptacle in pocket, it starts studies of modern letters which he leaves fast to found the groups of rock " urgent State ", then "Artefact". During 1980s, it continues its musical adventures while working as concepteur-editor in advertising.Having created unsuccessfully, a society of multimedia communication, while working in an agency of telemarketing , in 1991, he decided to write seriously. On recommendation of Jean-Bernard Pouy, he submitted some of his writing in 1992 to Patrick Raynal, manager of the collection Thriller. It was a huge, unpublishable handwritten manuscript of five hundred pages. Instead of rejection, the editor saw in Maurice "the signs of a literary phenomenon" strongly encouraging him to create other works.
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