- Paperback: 1 pages
- Publisher: Riverhead (Jan 14 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1573227021
- ISBN-13: 978-1573227025
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 2.1 x 20.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 113 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #950,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
The end of the millennium is just a couple of years away, and folks, it's getting squirrelly out there. Survivalists are stockpiling weapons in the hills as they wait for black helicopters and a new world order; Heaven's Gate cultists returned to the mother ship via poison-laced applesauce while members of the Solar Temple believed their suicides on earth would result in a better life on the planet Sirius. Can it get any stranger? In Douglas Rushkoff's novel, Ecstasy Club, it can and does. Rushkoff's club is an abandoned piano factory in Oakland, California, where members of a small group of idealists hold round-the-clock raves even as they seek to combine computer technology, mind-altering substances, and New Age spirituality to create a method of time travel.
Along with end-of-the-world scenarios, the millennium brings with it a heavy dose of conspiracy theory, and Ecstasy Club has its fair share. Once narrator Zach Levi and his merry band actually succeed in "breaking time" online, they are beset by menacing government agents, religious zealots, and a host of other special interest groups who are out to shut them down. So while we're all waiting for 1999, what better way to pass the time than with Douglas Rushkoff's Ecstasy Club? --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Rushkoff, author of such books on the emerging cyberculture as Playing the Future (1996), etc., applies his Faith Popcornlike sense of the zeitgeist to his first fiction: a high-tech conspiracy tale that ends up as a conventional melodrama despite its next-wave flair. In an abandoned factory in Oakland, a group of drug-munching techno-nerds and cyber-geeks, along with a guru wannabe, set up their experiment in communal living: a huge, fully wired environment for moneymaking parties and performances. With their virtual reality toys and visionquest drugs, the motley group of eight or so full-time residents hope to discover a higher level of consciousness and evolve as a select group of psychic travelers. Duncan, the leader of the rave cult, is a master of situational psychology, capable of bending his minions to his will--except for the narrator. Zack Levi, an Ivy League grad, seems to know that he's just slumming on his way to becoming a suburban shrink. Zack, after all, recognizes the cultic dimensions of the group's experiment as some sort of Zen nazism, a yin-yang adventure in tribe-think. Lauren, Duncan's lover, is also Zack's true love, despite his cohabitation with a hippie chick named Kirsten. When things go haywire, Lauren helps Zack pull out and retreat to domestic bliss in Ohio. Along the way, Duncan focuses his paranoia on one E.T. Harmon, the leader of Cosmotology, a kind of cross between L. Ron Hubbard and Bill Gates. And, like many paranoids, Duncan has real enemies: All the troubles that befall the naive space-trippers are in fact engineered by a grand conspiracy involving Cosmotology, the government, and some characters who resemble such famed space cadets as Timothy Leary and John Lilly. Full of the buzzwords valued by advertisers and marketers, this hyped-up fiction proudly proclaims: ``This demographic belongs to us.'' Enough cyberpop sociology to keep the Internet chatting; others will log off. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Origin of PLUR Foundation Myth,
By Sam I Am (Somerville, MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ecstasy Club: A Novel (Paperback)
A charismatic Brit and his entourage of overeducated dropouts take over a piano factory in Oakland, intending to squat there and throw the most massive raves the Bay Area has ever seen. But, as their project progresses, they find the mix of their idealistic youthful hormones and the hard drugs they gobble up like Captain Crunch has turned their enterprise into a paranoid schizophrenic cult called Ecstasy Club bent on time travel and transcendence. Things get weird when they actually succeed. But all is not well in Nirvana. Rushkoff manages to hard-wire a psychotically charged volume that connects all the pop-culture dots, like conspiracy theories, aliens, and MTV. The ironic distance of the narrator seems malleable, like physical distance on too much acid. Ecstasy Club seems to turn its own pages.(this review got accidentally posted to another Rushkoff book)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
all the little tidbits of what's real and what isn't,
By Jody Schiesser "interplanetary cowboy" (Savannah, GA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Ecstasy Club: A Novel (Paperback)
I really enjoyed this book, even with the small little snags here and there, the slowness at the beginning, and Zach's doubt which was annoying sometimes (at least the doubt of himself - I'm not sure how real it was). But the ideas were great fun, it was neat to see how the author Douglas Rushkoff blended ideas of psychedelic science and quantum physics and fictionalized versions of psychedelic celebrities (like versions of John Lilly and Terence McKenna) and included morphonic resonance and meme warefare and the idea that there really isn't good and evil just a want for other. These are all ideas I've either run across or thought about. I enjoyed seeing them played with in a story. I thought the ending rocked, and all the little tidbits of what's real and what isn't. And how consensual reality is manipulated, or can be. The CIA experiments were a lot like the ones they said the Cosmotologists (Scientologists-a play on them, huh?) and the gov't did on psychics with ... in the 50s-60s.Sure, a lot of the book is also pop psychology and pop psychedelica, but it was fun reading. And the rave ideology was interesting, even though I'm not certain the energy should be attempted to be directed, I like the idea of it coalescing much more.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply an excellent read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ecstasy Club: A Novel (Paperback)
Well, you have to notice that people either love or hate this book. That means it generated a strong emotional response either way, which for an author, is always a goal. I simply loved it. If you read through expecting all of it to be realistic, you'll be disappointed. If you read through expecting a wild romp with some unforgettable scenes describing the philosophy of the 90's "rave culture" - you'll enjoy yourself quite a bit. Keep in mind that the book is narrated from a perspective of a person who is rather heavily drugged most of the time - I think the people who state that it is not 'believable' are missing the point completely. This book was a page turner that kept me up all night until I read it, start to finish. Simply an incredible piece of work, and I would urge any open minded people to give it a chance. The writing style is crisp and easy to follow, making it an even more enjoyable read. One of the best books I've picked up in weeks. Five stars, all the way.
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