Review by Graham Johnstone

This ‘Apocalypse’ is no sudden attack from external enemies, it’s in the processes around us. Tom Kaczynski flips the positive labelling of ‘development’, seeing the transformation of our physical environment as alienating us from our primordial roots.

An early warning came in the form of 2012’s Beta Testing the Apocalypse, collecting Kaczynski’s short comics. These stories are not the stellar sci-fi of Star Wars, but the sociological ‘soft’ science fiction of, say, J.G.Ballard’s High Rise. Kaczynski similarly observes the present, extrapolates a future, then escalates this to its ultimate conclusions.

Kaczynski’s comics are part story, part illustrated essay on urban living: a little Sex & the City, but more ‘psyches & the city’. The publishers’ blurb refers to the book as a ‘treatise’, but that’s only half serious. Apart from a few single page ‘proclamations’, these ideas are embodied in individual human struggles. Kaczynski’s avatar(s) face their individual apocalypses, as they recognise the depth of their alienation (‘10,000 Years’); suffer endless commutes (‘100,000 Miles’); or live in the metaphorical and literal shadow of gentrification (‘976 Sq. Feet’). Kaczynski, like Ballard, is pursuing enduring interests, evidenced by three new stories (detailed below), justifying upgraded title Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse.

‘Skyway Sleepless’ takes us to the upper reaches of the built environment, as its ambitious architect arrives for Skylab Festival. This includes the artwork ‘Future Crime Scene’, a series of chalk outlines on the ground. Kaczynski is engaging enough to hook the reader into his psycho-social explorations with the immediate mystery of a real body in one of the outlines. Soon there are bodies all over the ground, not (it turns out) dead, but in narcoleptic sleep, mocking the title. This reverses, an earlier architect in comics, Mister X, unable to sleep amidst his urban vision gone wrong, and Kaczynski naming his architect Professor Ecke, seems a nod to that. The unnamed author avatar, though supposedly a detective, has little role beyond wandering observer, but it’s ten pages entertainingly spent.

A night off with a martial arts movie, provides a fresh angle on freelance life, so providing portmanteau title ‘36th Chamber of Commerce’. Kaczynski has fun with incongruous Kung-Fu analogies: “Ritual, Routine and Discipline. The Modern Body is a corporation.” It’s an efficient, entertaining short with good insights. First published in 2018, it’s “meeting the needs of an emerging market sector” in the post-Covid chambers of remote commerce.

Final, and previously unpublished, story ‘Utopia Dividend’ offers Kaczynski’s largest canvas. The device of filming a reality TV show on an island modelled as New Atlantis (after a fictional utopia), moves us across continents, back through colonial history into pre-history, then into space. Artefacts and stylings of ancient peoples are caught in modern brand agendas, and live-streaming taken somewhere new. It’s a feat of vivid world-building, all seen through the eyes of a single character. 

‘Utopia Dividend’ exemplifies Kaczynski’s approach and ability. He’s sweeping in his scope, and inventive with his ideas, exploring them at the levels of both society and self. If that still sounds somewhat technical, he takes his characters to unexpected, poetic places. True, those characters don’t act or change much, but perhaps that’s realistic in the face of such relentless global forces. 

Kaczynski’s art perfectly suits his ideas, with the technical-pen rendered environments populated by more expressively inked humans. 

These new stories offer fresh twists on Kaczynski’s ‘Apocalypse’, and are augmented by witty endnotes, and a helpful index of topics.

Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse won’t be for everyone, but if the title appeals, you’ll want to test out the actual book.