Only Americans Burn In Hell (2019)

By Jarett Kobek

304pp, Fiction

Notes

2019-08-02

I read a couple of Jarett Kobek books, the commercial flop ‘The Future Won’t Be Long’ and his most recent ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ I really enjoyed the former, the latter was good too but a kind of lesser ‘I Hate The Internet’ in some ways. I’m really looking forward to his ODB book. [Jan 2024, 5 years on No ODB book has been released]

Kobek really gets consumer computer technology in a way that no other author I’ve read does. You know how some writers can sketch a whole believable character from some telling details about what they’re wearing or the car they drive? Kobek does that with consumer electronics e.g. from ‘ The Future…’

One feature which I paid an especial attention to was Jeremy’s state of the art IBM PC Compatible 486DX-33mhz computer, replete with 1024 X 786 SVGA video and a SoundBlaster 16 Pro 2.

Or from ‘Only Americans…’

HRH powered on the Alienware Area-51 desktop computer

His references are specific rather than generic, he mentions Overwatch not Fortnite and the choice is meaningful.

Compare this to the following sentence from a review of Zed in the guardian a couple of weeks back…

Varley’s expertise is in the “lifechain”, a Beetle program of algorithms, and Mann seems to have broken their futurology.

I had to try 3 or 4 times before I could get past this sentence. (Context; ‘beetle’ is a google like company, ‘lifechain’ is like a fictional hand wavy technology, fine.) But really? A program of algorithms? In the context of this gibberish inventing Beetle and Lifechain just comes off as a way to avoid engaging with or understanding the precise and nameable problems of real world entities and technologies in favour of vague allusions.