Welcome to the official website of D. HARLAN WILSON, award-winning novelist, short story writer, cultural theorist, screenwriter, pseudobodybuilder, English professor, and blankety blank blanker. DHW's books include The Kafka Effekt (2001), Stranger on the Loose (2003), Pseudo-City (2005), Dr. Identity, or, Farewell to Plaquedemia (2007), Blankety Blank: A Memoir of Vulgaria (2008), Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance (2009) and Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction (2009).

Dr. Identity, winner of the Wonderland Book Award, marks the first installment of The Scikungfi Trilogy. Book 2 is Codename Prague (2010); Book 3 is The Kyoto Man (2011).

DHW holds a M.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, a M.A. in Science Fiction Studies from the University of Liverpool, & a Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University. Prior to his graduate studies he worked as an international salesman, a model & actor, a casino dealer, a security guard, a garbage man, a tax collector, a sommelier, a town crier, & a flâneur.

DHW is editor-in-chief of The Dream People: A Journal of Irreal Texts. Click here to read the latest issue (#31), which features fiction, creative nonfiction, novel excerpts, microcriticism, reviews and artwork.

News

Mike Arnzen has written a sharp, insightful review of Blankety Blank. Read it here.

Jodi Lee has interviewed DHW here.

DHW's long awaited Technologized Desire: Selfhood & the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction debuted June 12-15 at the Science Fiction Research Association's annual convention. Purchase a hardcover or paperback copy at Amazon, B&N, etc.

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There is a new interview with DHW conducted by Michael Gibbs in Fiction Factor.

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Here is the cover for DHW's upcoming novel, The Kyoto Man, beautifully doktored by Brett Weldele, illustrator of the graphic novel, The Surrogates, which will be released this year as a film starring Bruce Willis. The Kyoto Man is the third and final installment in DHW's Scikungfi trilogy preceded by Codename Prague (2010) and Dr. Identity (2007). It will be published by Raw Dog Screaming Press in 2011.

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Here is the final cover for DHW's Peckinpah. Artwork by LeMat. Book design and layout by Danny Evarts. Evarts is also illustrating the text itself.

Peckinpah will be available for purchase soon. Read excerpts in Issue 3.1 (Summer 2009) of Midnight in Hell. Also in this issue is an interview with DHW in which he discusses Peckinpah and the writing process.

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DHW has won Wright State University's Presidential Award for Early Career Achievement. The award recognizes excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service during the formative years (the first four years) of a junior faculty member's initial appointment.

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Two of DHW's stoires, "Disney Reanimated" and "Lord Byron Circus," have been translated into Polish by Piotr Leszczynski and appear in the latest issue of RED.

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Eric Miles Williamson—PEN/Hemingway finalist, editor of American Book Review, and surrogate for the ghost of Henry Miller—says this about DHW's upcoming novel Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance):

"D. Harlan Wilson's latest romp of a book, Peckinpah: An Ultravoilent Romance, proves that Wilson is either a genius or a madman, in all likelihood a crazed hybrid of both. A book that will delight Wilson's fans and mortally shock the unintiated." ERIC MILES WILLIAMSON, author of Welcome to Oakland and East Bay Grease

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CURRENTLY ONLINE: Issue 31 of The Dream People. Featured are fictions (by Adam Breckenridge, Ron Burch, Joana D'Arezzo, Larry Foundation, Richard Goodwin, Kek-w, John Lawson, AE Reiff, Bradley Sands & Jenny Schwartz), a novel excerpt (by Eric Miles Williamson), a microcriticism (by DHW), book reviews (of Mykle Hansen's HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me!, Gina Ranalli's Mother Puncher, Jeffrey Thomas' new edition of Punktown, Andersen Prunty's Zerostrata, & Carlton Mellick III's Punk Land, The Egg Man, Ultra Fuckers & War Slut), & artwork (by Martin Harris, Nekro & Tom Moran).

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The author of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell and many other comic masterpieces—like James Bond, you know his name—has this to say about Peckinpah: An Ultraviolent Romance:

"A bludgeoning celluloid rush of language and ideas served from an action-painter's bucket of fluorescent spatter, Peckinpah is an incendiary gem and very probably the most extraordinary new novel you will read this year." ALAN MOORE

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Read DHW's flash fiction, To Bed, to Bed—Goodnight, in Issue 4.3 (March 2009) of Pank Magazine.

Read two more new DHW stories, The Traumatic Event, or, The Walri Holocaust, or, The Hairy Deed, or, The Man Who Disappeared and The Kerosene Lantern Tour, in the debut issue of Saucytooth's Webthology.

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If you are Dutch, or if you read Dutch, or if you simply enjoy looking at Dutch words, check out DHW's stories “Gemeente” (“Community”) in Leydraden (No. 75, January 2009), “De lijkschouwing” (“The Autopsy”) in Plebs (Winter 2008), and "De Mexicanaase smoking" ("The Mexican Tuxedo") in Komkommer & Kwel (No. 10, March 2009). Both pieces were translated by Yorgos Dalman.

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Arthur Kroker, notorious B.I.G. of postmodern theory, has this to say about Technologized Desire:

"In Technologized Desire, the cultural pathologies that mark the panic ecstasy and terminal doom of the posthuman condition are powerfully rehearsed in the language of science fiction. Here, images of prosthetic subjects, zombies, cut-ups and armies of the medieval dead actually slip off the pages of literature to become the terminal hauntology of these technologized times. Technologized Desire is nothing less than a brilliant data screen of future memories. Read it well: it's a survival guide for bodies flatlined by the speed of accelerating technology."

Learn about Arhtur's books and other projects here.

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In addition to winning a fake, metanarrational award (the Stick Figure Prize in Language & Literature), Dr. Identity, or, Farewell to Plaquedemia has now won a real, legitimate award: the Wonderland Book Award for best Bizarro novel of 2007. It was presented on 15 November 2008 in Troutdale, Oregon, at the first annual Bizarro Con. Here is an insignia:

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Gary Hoppenstand—editor of The Journal of Popular Cutlure and professor of writing, rhetoric and American cultures at Michigan State University—has blurbed Technologized Desire:

"D. Harlan Wilson’s Technologized Desire: Selfhood and the Body in Postcapitalist Science Fiction is a fantastic book. One of the finest theoretical examinations in the field, it is also eminently readable and highly incisive. With this, Wilson has written a major work, one that will stand out (and above) in science fiction studies. Both great fun and wonderfully intelligent, how could you go wrong? Highly recommended.”

In other news, check out this review of Blankety Blank at The Brooklyn Rail. The review is at the bottom of the page.

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Harold Jaffe—editor of Fiction International, professor of English and comparative studies at San Diego State University, and prolific novelist and "guerilla writer"—has blurbed Technologized Desire:

"Describing an impressively wide arc from high-toned cultural theory to cyberpunk fiction to techno-centered cinema, Wilson advances his theory that 'the only choice available to the postmodern subject ... is rooted in a dependency on ... the ultraviolent schizophrenic production of the commodity-self.' Technologized Desire is a bright, brazen, evocative reading of technology, the body, and the art that is inaccurately labeled science 'fiction'."

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Booklist has this to say about Blankety Blank: A Memoir of Vulgaria:

"With three offbeat story collections and the indescribably madcap Dr. Identity (2007) to his credit, Wilson has been duly anointed as speculative fiction’s most unpredictable stylist. Here he flouts all novelistic conventions and propriety in recounting the misdeeds of a serial killer known only by a name written in blood on the walls of his victims’ manicured homes—Blankety Blank. In the mid-twenty-first century, the American landscape has morphed from suburbia into “vulgaria,” featuring neighborhoods replete with shopping malls and oversized McMansions. Quiggle Estates resident Rutger Van Trout just wants to enjoy his newly built silo in peace, without the added distractions of a nymphomaniac daughter, a werewolf-obsessed son, and a wife haunted by her own skeleton. Then Blankety Blank leaves his trail of blood across vulgaria, and it’s up to Rutger and Quiggle Estates’ odd assortment of faux superheroes to save everyone. Wilson sprinkles his rapid-fire narrative with glib aphorisms, absurdist pseudo-historical tidbits, and outlandish digressions that leave a reader breathless. Although this isn’t everyone’s cup, iconoclasts will relish every word."

Additionally, there is a wonderful article in The Specusphere based on an interview with DHW in which he talks about Blankety Blank, Bizarro, Pangea II, and more: Irrealism and the Bizarro Movement.

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Here is a blurb for DHW's upcoming Technologized Desire:

“Postmodern analysis of science fiction doesn’t get any better than this. Jump in and see how far down the rabbit hole goes.” William Irwin, editor of The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real and More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded

If you liked the Matrix trilogy, you'll like Irwin's books, which contain essays from a wide range of scholars, critics and artists, among them pomo shaman Slavoj Zizek.

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DHW has a new piece of creative microcriticism, "Technicity and the Pathological Turn," in No. 34 of University of Idaho's Fugue.

There is a review of Blankety Blank in Issue #37 of ChiZine.

Publisher's Weekly recently had this to say about Dr. Identity: "Readers with a taste for wacky experimental fiction will enjoy D. Harlan Wilson's Dr. Identity, or, Farewell to Plaquedemia: A Pulp Science Fiction Novel, set in the postcapitalist city of Bliptown."

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The latest issue of Withersin, Death 1.3, features an interview with DHW called "Journey into Plaquedemia" in which he discusses Dr. Identity. Go here to pick up a copy or, better yet, subscribe to Withersin, a literary magazine of "the dark, the different, the pleasantly sinister."

Compliments of Withersin, here is an abbreviated online version of DHW's interview and a short review of Dr. Identity.

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There is a review of Blankety Blank in Issue 4.1 of Sussurus Magazine in which DHW's writing is compared to the wired, weird rants of The Ultimate Warrior. High praise indeed. Click the sussurus brain to read the review.

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There are two short, preliminary reviews of Blankety Blank: A Memoir of Viulgaria available from Word Press and Fractal Matter.

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A recent edition of American Book Review (Vol. 29, Issue 4, May/June 2008) features an excellent review of Dr. Identity by Leora Lev, who describes the novel as "better 'n a bushel full of Benzedrine-spiked donuts holes! Pomo cybertheory never tasted so good or made you fly this high!"

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DHW has been commissioned to write a book-length study of John Carpenter's film They Live for Wallflower Press's new Cultographies series. Don't hold your breath, though; it won't be published until 2012. In the meantime, check out some other cultographies:

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Here is the cover for Brandon Duncan's upcoming graphic novel, Ten Nails on a Screaming Chalkboard, which will be published by Raw Dog Screaming Press in 2008. The book combines stories by DHW, John Lawson, Gina Ranalli, Dustin LaValley, Bradley Sands, Vincent Sakowski, Nicole Del Sesto, Sean Kilpatrick, and Andersen Prunty.