With America hopelessly bogged down in a protracted Operation Desert Storm, Elvis has returned from the dead as a tormented political assassin, there are aliens in the White House and giant monsters on the rampage. Factor in crazed combat robots, the total destruction of Japan, insane conspiracy theories and huge quantities of mindless blood-spattered violence, then get ready for the end of all creation in this stunning literary debut.
Illustrated by legendary underground artist Savage Pencil.
Ken Hollings writes regularly for Bizarre, Sight and Sound and The Wire. His work has also appeared in Gargoyle and the St Martins Press anthologies, The Last Sex and Digital Delirium.

Destroy All Monsters

Hollings, Ken

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

An iconoclastic, penetrating and darkly humorous history of America from 1947-1959, the decade in which the nation defined its image and created the blueprint for the world we live in today. Welcome to Mars is an iconoclastic, penetrating and darkly humorous history of America from 1947-1959, the decade in which the nation defined its image and created the blueprint for the world we live in today. Welcome To Mars draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels from this unique period when the future first took on a tangible presence. Ken Hollings depicts an unsettled time in which the layout of Suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed.Seamlessly interweaving developments in technology, popular culture, politics, changes in home life, the development of the self, collective fantasy and overwhelming paranoia, Hollings has produced an alarming and often hysterically funny vision of the past that would ultimately govern all of our futures.

Welcome to Mars: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947–1959 (Strange Attractor Press)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Strange Attractor Press

Welcome to Mars is a captivating look at the culture of postwar America and its dream of limitless technological and human development. Utilizing declassified government archives, newspaper records, ad campaigns, and B-movies of the period, Hollings weaves an intricate web of Cold War politics, UFO scares, psychedelic research, and 1950s pop culture. From the atom bomb and suburban planning to the space race and little-green-men movies, Welcome to Mars shows the startling connections between science fact and science fiction, a feedback loop in which real technological advances and government experimentation gave rise to science fiction fantasy, which then fed new innovation and research. Table of Contents Introduction: Scenes From A History As Yet Unwritten Chapter 1--1947: Rebuilding Lemuria Chapter 2--1948: Flying Saucers Over America Chapter 3--1949: Behaviour Modification Chapter 4--1950: Cheapness And Splendour Chapter 5--1951: Absolute Elsewhere Chapter 6--1952: Red Planet Chapter 7--1953: Other Tongues, Other Flesh Chapter 8--1954: Meet The Monsters Chapter 9--1955: Popular Mechanics Chapter 10--1956: 'Greetings, My Friend!' Chapter 11--1957: Contact With Space Chapter 12--1958: Mass Hysteria Chapter 13--1959: Teenagers From Outer Space Conclusion: Thinking the Unthinkable Bibliography Index List of Illustrations

Welcome to Mars: Politics, Pop Culture, and Weird Science in 1950s America

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

North Atlantic Books

A subtle and sometimes disturbing account of how technology has impacted upon human culture.The Bright Labyrinth is a subtle and sometimes disturbing account of how technology has impacted upon human culture. Offering a theoretical map for the future development of communication design, The Bright Labyrinth draws upon architecture and film, avant-garde art and critical theory, military strategy and machine intelligence to guide the reader through the Digital Regime that has shaped a century of human creativityand thought. Inside The Bright Labyrinth you will encounter Edison's talking dolls, the dream archi- tecture of world fairs and movie sets, Japanese comic books, early super- computers, sex researchers, zombies, assassins, monsters and ghosts. Ken Hollings reveals how our relationship with media and machines is far more dynamic, unstable and stimulating than we have previously allowed ourselves to believe. The Digital Regime throws long shadows over our past; and it is only by looking deeply into these shadows that we can begin to understand the rapid changes taking place allaround us.

Bright Labyrinth: Sex, Death and Design in the Digital Regime (Strange Attractor Press)

A radical retelling of our relationship with the cosmos, reinventing the history of astronomy as a new form of astrological calendar.
Astronomy is another form of cinema. Time is fragmented and extended. Matter becomes light in motion. The camera remains fixed, looking outwards into the darkness, while the earth moves beneath our feet.
A carefully constructed text in sixty numbered sections, The Space Oracle reinvents the history of astronomy as a new form of astrological calendar. This radical retelling of our relationship with the cosmos reaches back to places and times when astronomers were treated as artists or priests, to when popes took part in astral rites and the common people feared eclipses and comets as portents of disaster. 
Panoramic and encyclopedic in its scope, The Space Oracle brings astronauts and spies, engineers and soldiers, goddesses and satellites into alignment with speculative insights and everyday observations. The universe, Hollings argues, is a work in progress―enjoy it. 
Ken Hollings is a writer, broadcaster, and cultural theorist based in London. He has given readings, lectures and presentations of his work at the Royal Institution, the Berlin Akademie der Künste, the Venice Biennale, Tate Britain and the Royal College of Art, where he currently teaches. His previous two books, Welcome to Mars and The Bright Labyrinth are published by Strange Attractor Press.
“Ken Hollings is a master at connecting the dots between avant-garde art history, outré culture and weird science.” ―David Pescovitz, Boing Boing

The Space Oracle

Science & Math

Astronomy & Space Science

A journey deep into the heart of the trash experience- tales from the underground and exploitation movie scene in America during the 1960s.Trash has always served me well-over the years it has become the outer form and material expression of my dreams- of tomorrow, of life in space, of the blissful alienation from this world that I have always craved. -from Inferno So begins the first part of this personal inquiry into the world of trash by writer and theorist Ken Hollings. Why do we find ourselves so attracted to the cheap and vulgar, the discarded, the misshapen and the abject? What do we really mean when we say that something is "so bad it's good," and what finally does it say about us? Part personal confession and part historical roadmap of tales from the underground and exploitation movie scene in America during the 1960s, Inferno takes the reader on a journey deep into the heart of the trash experience. With Inferno, Hollings offers a complex and intricate timeline of connections, coincidences, and resonances that have mostly gone unnoticed. He traces the transmission of "the Purple Death," a deadly and exotic virus first depicted in an old episode of a Flash Gordon movie serial, through the films of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and Kenneth Anger and into the output of such exploitation pioneers as Ray Dennis Steckler, Hershel Gordon Lewis, and Russ Meyer. Hollings also turns his idiosyncratic gaze upon key aspects of teenage culture during the 1960s, including hot rods, "Rat Fink," surfers, bikers, and beach parties, uncovering a secretive and hidden universe of masks, fake identities, and secret desires. Even Dante would think twice about taking this trip into Hell.

Inferno, Volume 1: The Trash Project (Strange Attractor Press)

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

A series of essays modeled on the Purgatory of Dante Alighieri—personal reflections, historical incidents, and unexpected mythological correspondences.\n“The obsession with Beauty and Virtue must inevitably bring Trash into existence. Trash offers a way of lifting their curse; it marks the end of all such fatal enchantments.”\nIn this sequel to 2020’s Inferno, Hollings shifts his attention away from America in the Age of Pop to take a close look at European decadence and decay at the end of the nineteenth century. Purgatory follows the twin fates of Hallward and Hancock as they are drawn, like so many artists before them, towards the city of Paris. It was here that exiled Swedish playwright August Strindberg struggled to turn iron and carbon into gold, while the aesthete Sâr Péladan staged his sumptuous Salons de la Rose+Croix. Over a series of thirty-three essays directly modeled on the Purgatory of Dante Alighieri, personal reflections, historical incidents, and unexpected mythological correspondences are combined to uncover a restless underground labyrinth of alchemists, poets, painters, and philosophers. Together, their combined influence would shape not only the events of May ’68 but the emergence of a uniquely European form of Trash cinema devoted exclusively to beauty, sex, and despair.\nTo celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, Ken Hollings offers the reader a radical retelling of the middle part of the Divine Comedy. Hell may be a tough act to follow—but, as Volume Two of the Trash Project reveals, Purgatory can be just as weird and dangerous.

Purgatory, Volume 2: The Trash Project: Towards The Decay Of Meaning

Radiant Matter comprises of a series of recent artworks that are united in their desire to analyze and reflect on the nature of scientific inquiry, the role of speculation, fiction, and spiritualism. A central position in this book belongs to the Radiant Matter, an edited pictorial essay which the book lends its title from, consisting of over 250 images selected from various disciplines: astronomy, cosmology, medicine, technology and anthropology. Their color composition is not coincidental; it is based on the gradient seen on scientific observations of cosmic background radiation. Since ancient times celestial bodies are thought to have had an influence on the human body, as oftentimes represented in the image of the Zodiac Man. Already in the 1800s electromagnetic waves had been discovered and some 100 years ago cosmic radiation was identified. Radiant Matter recon- figures such moments in history, scientific or spiritual in nature, in order to analyze, manipulate and revaluate their significance.Together with a poetic image essay and a conversation between the artist and the editor Kris Dittel, this widely illustrated book includes texts by Ken Hollings, Maarten Vanden Eynde, and Raqs Media Collective.

Radiant Matter

Onomatopee

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