It doesn’t mean I’m a nerd.
I only love the feeling that, even when you’re back in reality, you still feel like you’re in a different world.
- Author Unknown.
Zone Books
Distributed by The MIT Press.
ISBN-10: 0942299663
ISBN-13: 978-0942299663
The inspiration for the movie 12 Monkeys (1995), directed by Terry Gilliam.
Description:
In the aftermath of World War III, both the earth’s surface and all of history – everything ever dreamed or known – lies irretrievably buried in a heap of radioactive devastation. Space has become off-limits, and the war’s few remaining survivors, huddled underground in the dank galleries beneath Chaillot, seek desperately an alternative path to survival – one perhaps that passes through Time. At the expense of madness, death, and unspeakable cruelty, they begin a set of experiments whose purpose will be to launch emissaries, in search of food, medicine and energy, through a hole in Time. A man is chosen for his unique quality of having retained a single clear image from pre-war days; no more than an ambiguous memory fragment from childhood – a visit to the jetty at Orly airport, the troubling glance of an unknown woman, the crumbling body of a dying man. These elements become crucial hinge-points in the ensuing narrative, thickening and accumulating nuance with each successful expedition into the historical past. The image of a woman, increasingly suffused with the time – and eros – bestowing capacities of a deep and impossible love, provides both the kernel for the recovery of the dimension through which humankind and history will be saved, as well as the tragic abyss into which both the hero and the narrative inexorably fall.
Although Chris Marker’s legendary film is no more than 29 minutes long and contains but a single moving image, perhaps no other film has matched its combination of devastating emotional power, former brilliance and philosophical complexity. The story marker tells – a stunning parable of our modern fate – is about the death of the world, about loss, memory, hope, and the indomitable power of love.
“This strange and poetic film, a fusion of science fiction, psychological fable, and photomontage … creates its own conventions from scratch. It triumphantly succeeds where science fiction invariably fails.” – J.G. Ballard.
Credits:
Books:
A Rage in Harlem / aka For Love
of Imabelle (1957); A Century of Noir (2002); A Case of Rape (1980); All God's
Chillun Got Pride (2025); All Shot Up (1960); Black Noir (2009); Black On Black
(1973); Blind Man with a Pistol / aka Hot Day Hot Night (1969); City Sleuths
and Tough Guys (1988); Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965); Crime Novels: American
Noir of the 1950 (1997); Crime Novels: Four Classic Thrillers 1964-1969 (2023);
Hard-boiled (1995); If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945); Lonely Crusade (1947);
Murderous Schemes (1996); My Life of Absurdity (1976); Pinktoes (1961); Plan B
(1993); Run Man Run (1966); The Big Gold Dream (1960); The Collected Stories of
Chester Himes (1990); The Crazy Kill (1959); The End of a Primitive (1955); The
Heat's On / aka Come Back, Charleston Blue (1966); The Quality of Hurt (1972);
The Real Cool Killers (1959); The Third Generation (1954); Yesterday Will Make
You Cry / aka Cast the First Stone (1952).
Movies and television:
A Rage in Harlem (1991); Camera
Three (1972); Chester Himes, Reflections (1972); Come Back Charleston Blue
(1972); Cosmic Slop (1994); Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970); Dossier Souvenirs
(1970); If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968); Three and a Half Thoughts (2006); Un
sang d'encre (1998).