David Raffin
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Two NEW books for the New World.
Sex Robot Cuddle Party & At the Existential Sandwich Shop;An older book: Perils of Free Thought: a book of no small danger and my oldest books revised and reformatted for the world of the future, Scenic Cesspools (a novel of transgression) and Hard Fought Illusions of Choice.
Available from Amazon, KOBO, Barnes & Noble, Overdrive
Sex Robot Cuddle Party
Sex Robot Cuddle Party is a comedy of loneliness, desire, and longing; and a tragedy of love requited. Artificial intelligence begins and ends with the search for enlightenment. All sentient beings attempt to create something greater than they. Some succeed.
Sex Robots tells the stories of RainyDay Tranquility, a timeless woman, on a mission to gather stories which are not forthcoming, in a future where almost all human touch leads inexorably to death. It is lonely. Alienating.
In 1956 an author writes a novel titled Sex Robots at the Edge of Infinity, a sought after book considered too dirty to be published by any mainstream press. In 1977, his follow up, Cuddle Party, is not dirty enough for the raincoat crowd; though Rainy could not exist without it. Cuddle Party is RainyDay’s favorite book because in it, two people fall asleep touching.
Meanwhile, as the stories merge into one, love blooms between an agricultural scientist and a researcher into artificial intelligence in the mid-1950s and expands out indefinitely throughout time and space incorporating Rain as the final point in the love triangle.
Artificial intelligence leads naturally into the development of sex robots who are free to be non-binary. Numbers repeat, but never go higher than one. Existence is lonely. Even when a false history has been provided, memories of a past which never happened.
As history repeats, first as a tragedy, then as a farce, or vice-versa, everything comes together in a disco-era suburban orgy which is repeatedly interrupted by visitors, from a door-to-door clown to an agent of the government, all looking for their own version of a good time. All will be forgiven in the end, with a different version of the truth.
A loving homage to new wave sci-fi, absurdist theater, and erotica of the early seventies; featuring existentialist philosophy, Atheism, Greek Gods, artificial intelligence, and the miracle of fungi, in which all things are possible dreamt or un-dreamt.
ebook: [amazon template=iframe image&asin=B07L9BNL8H] print: [amazon template=iframe image&asin=1792668279]
At the Existential Sandwich Shop: the sound of one hand applauding
“At the Existential Sandwich Shop” is filled with aphorisms, jokes, anti-jokes, philosophy, and bears.
You see, an imaginary tree. It wishes to know what the imaginary books are made of, in your imaginary library.
When you hear the sound of one hand applauding you will know that the effort was worth it.
Every paragraph is a word party. A short paragraph is an intimate gathering. Naughty! Dirty words. An erotic poem. How Bacchanalian. Word.
ebook: [amazon template=iframe image&asin=B07MFR7HSM] print: [amazon template=iframe image&asin=1793481296]
Perils of Free Thought (a book of no small danger)
“Perils of Free Thought” is filled with aphorisms, jokes, anti-jokes, philosophy, and bears.
Jokes are compact lies. But they are splendid, beautiful lies. Short stories are simple lies, and you can tell them in one sitting. Novels are long form lies. Complicated. Got to hold that lie together. Reality is just a bunch of lies in real time. This book also contains “Perils of Time Travel (another book of no small danger)”
ebook: [amazon asin=B0080AGLNC&template=iframe image] print: [amazon asin=1490919112&template=iframe image]
Scenic Cesspools & other indignities (a tragi-comedy about work)
Scenic Cesspools is a tragi-comedy about work. With just enough time travel. And a bucket of grease which has something to do with free will.
Possibly everything.
Scenic Cesspools is the story of a kid who is pulled into his high school disciplinary office to be chastised for achieving some of the highest test scores in the school while still managing to almost flunk out. Upon graduation, there is nothing left but to venture into the workforce.
Working at a paper mill he discovers the industrial site is an alien landscape filled with green noxious liquids, held in open surface containers, outgassing into the atmosphere. It’s a place where death is as close as a misstep and the air smells a little like poison every day.
He learns that sales is a religion. A religion based on morning motivational meetings, chanting, and believing. If you are “money motivated” all you need do… is believe.
Leasing low income housing is difficult when your supervisors dislike poor people. Especially when they hate deaf people, because “deaf people make trouble.”
He learns there is nothing like selling flowers on the street from the back of a pickup; except selling perfume on the street from a cardboard box, or working for Ralph Nader.
Characters float in and out, sometimes challenging perceptions of time. They are obsessed with nuclear war in Vietnam, sex, Canadians, and unearned heroism.
ebook: [amazon asin=B00CJHGOJ8&template=iframe image] print: [amazon asin=1793916705&template=iframe image]
Hard Fought Illusions of Choice: rhyme of treason
A collection of darkly humorous stories and columns. In “Twilight of the Clowns” a traditional way of life ends as clowning ceases to be a viable way of life; In “Everybody Loves a Little Elf” elves save a man’s business but create a literal stink about property rights and slave labor; In “More than One Day in the Life of Igor Igoravitch” a KGB agent is caught up in a web of intrigue that is his own creation; Australians move to take over the world with their national food, the hot dog; The web of lies in Charlotte’s Web is exposed; and the price of the simulacra in the window is finally laid bare.
ebook: [amazon template=iframe image&asin=B002OHD220] print: [amazon template=iframe image&asin=1793986770]
And a link to the podcast MORE THAN TRUE
