Author: Robert M. Coates

About: A book nearly as impossible to describe as it was to digitize and format for the web. Essentially, an American expat name of Charles Dograr is tricked into firing a laser death ray. Chuck is so in love with the idea, he helps the laser's maker plan a bank job. Then it gets surreal. First published by Robert McAlmon in 1929, there are hints of sexuality somewhere in there.

Additional: Steeply discounted until this book hits the Apple store, at which point our description will read: The first Dadaist novel in English! This genre-blending farce of noir, science fiction and black comedy dovetails nicely with Flann O'Brien's Third Policemen. By Robert M. Coates, the famed critic who coined the phrase "Abstract Expressionism." First published in Paris by the legendary Contact Editions.

But you people will know the truth.

Excerpt:

"I call myself the 'Eater of Darkness,'" the old gentleman chuckled. The pointer was at 2250 yds. The x-ray rod of light had now launched on a long flight through darkness, save where once it flashed on and through the spars of a ship its pennant waving. They were traversing the Hudson.

"Look inside," commanded the old gentleman, opening a pinhole slot in the side of the machine. Charles looked--once--and drew back affrighted. He had never conceived such an inferno of cold incandescence. There had been no glare--if anything only a pale colorless glow.

But it was as if a splinter of the sun had pierced his retina.

"I'll see if I can screw her up to 3000. She ought to stand it tonight."

Charles felt the old gentleman's hand crawling crablike along his leg as the lever advanced and the x-ray bullet bored on.