This book takes place in the future (the future Wallace envisioned in the mid 1990s, the future we envision today is a bit different, there's really no place for the Clean Party in the coming years), in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, which I think is 2009. Set in the Metro Boston area, about half of the story takes place at the Enfield Tennis Academy, an elaborate campus atop a scenic hill offering a view of the massive catapults that hurl waste north to the Great Concavity, while the other half of the book (it's a massive tome, 1000 or so pages including the copious foot notes, which you really can't skip) focuses on a halfway house half way down the same hill. A number of unforgettable characters populate the pages, the entire Incandenza family (including the long departed patriarch, the “Mad Stork” James Orin Incandenza, who visits Don Gately in wraith form after Gately gets shot by the Canuck with the “Moose” shirt after the coke addict who kills the dogs… it gets complicated.) The book is excellent, the first fifty pages or so may not be exactly easy going, but soon the book opens right up and you< do not want it to end. Which it does, eventually. Kind of. Oh–and there's Eschaton and the wheelchair assassins and the Madame Psychosis radio program and the Whataburger invitational and Pemulis buying that DMZ...
Books »Infinite Jest
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Books »Civilwarland in Bad Decline
Funny, smart, poignant short stories set in the new future.
Everyone that I have recommended this to loves it.
You can also hear him read some selections at This American Life.
See more: Books 1990s Comedy Sci-Fi Short Stories
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Posted on November 21, 2005
TV Shows »Firefly
Man, Joss got screwed.
Fox originally aired the show out of order.
And apparently advertised in a well.
Did anyone else hear about this show when it aired?
It's a shame, because it rules!
See more: TV Shows 2000s Comedy Sci-Fi
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Posted on November 14, 2005
Books »The Long Walk
Stephen King is a jerk.
But this is one of his best books.
Young boys walk a marathon to the death.