Pop Apocalypse

The United States and its allies have left the UN to form the Freedom Coalition, which has conducted serial invasions of intransigent countries and regions, including a rebellious anti-capitalist sector of Northern California (Operation Win the West, all rights reserved). The entire Middle East has become a consumerist Caliphate (a reversion to the Ottoman past), led by the hugely popular Lebanese pop singer, Caliph Fred. After an attack on the al-Aqsa mosque is televised on the Holy Land Channel, the Freedom Coalition and the Caliphate prepare for war against each other. Eliot R. Vanderthorpe, Jr., celebrity heir to the multibillion dollar Omni fortune and debauched party animal, is totally oblivious to the political chaos around him. He has far more serious problems to deal with. His hardcore evangelical Christian dad, founder of the Omni Science Corporation, is breeding red heifers on his Texas cattle ranch in anticipation of the Rapture. His activist girlfriend Sarah and he have broken up after a decade of sporadic dating. Eliot quits school and spends a summer in Europe partying even more mindlessly than usual. But when his exploits are inadvertently broadcast before an international television audience, Eliot's father decides he needs to save the soul of his sinful son. Eliot Sr. forces Jr. to take a job at Omni Science and makes him list his name on the New York Reputations Exchange. The "discipline of the Market," Eliot Sr. believes, will do his son a world of good. Eliot's brief attempt at respectable living quickly unravels. In the classified database of the Total Terror Surveillance System, which Omni Science runs for the Department of Homeland Security, Eliot finds footage of a man who looks exactly like him, a cosmetically-altered Eliot-fan - or someone crazier still. This impostor - Eliot lives in Berkeley, California, which with the rest of the Bay Area has been cut off from the media sphere after the Freedom Coalition invasion. This discovery will send Eliot on a crazy journey ranging from the heart of the occupied San Francisco Bay Area, to the gang-infested Riot Zones of New Jersey, and ultimately to the Holy Land itself. On his quest to discover the true identity of his doppelganger, Eliot will find that his father is right to be breeding red heifers: the End of the World may be more nigh than anyone suspects. His father's former business partners, Eliot learns, are planning to stage the Apocalypse, to which they own the intellectual property rights, live on television unless Eliot and his few remaining friends can stop them.


Genre: Science Fiction

"One hell of a satire, one hell of a world." - Roger Rosenblatt