Pseudo-City is the third book by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author D. Harlan Wilson

D. Harlan Wilson

D. Harlan Wilson is an American short-story writer and novelist whose body of work has been associated with the genres of irrealism, science fiction, fantasy, horror, bizarro fiction, megalofiction, splatterpunk, absurdism, literary fiction, ultraviolence, and postmodernism...

. Referred to as a novel as often as a collection of stories -- Wilson himself has called it a "story-cycle" -- it contains twenty-nine irreal short stories

Short Stories

Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...

 and flash fiction

Flash fiction

Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...

 that overlap and feature recurrent characters. Pieces in this collection originally appeared in magazines and journals such as Albedo one

Albedo one

Albedo One is an Irish horror, fantasy and science fiction magazine founded in 1993 and currently published by Albedo One Productions.-Overview:...

, The Dream People, Red Cedar Review, Nemonymous

Nemonymous

Nemonymous was a short fiction publication that labeled itself a "megazanthus" . It was published in the United Kingdom and edited by British writer D.F...

, Milk Magazine

Milk magazine

Milk is a lifestyle magazine in Hong Kong.- External links :*...

and Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens.

Cover Description

In Pseudofoliculitis City nothing is as it seems and everything is as it should be. Today's forecast calls for extreme confrontation, with sandwich

Sandwich

A sandwich is a food item, typically consisting of two or more slices of :bread with one or more fillings between them, or one slice of bread with a topping or toppings, commonly called an open sandwich. Sandwiches are a widely popular type of lunch food, typically taken to work or school, or...

 flurries and the threat of handlebar moustache

Handlebar moustache

A handlebar moustache is a moustache with particularly lengthy, upward curved, extremities. It is named for its resemblance to the handlebars of a bicycle. It is also known as a "spaghetti moustache", because of its stereotypical association with Italian men...

s to the west. By turns absurd

Absurd

Absurd or The Absurd may refer to:* Absurdity, general and technical usage - associated with extremely poor reasoning, the ridiculous, or nonsense....

 and surreal

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, dark and challenging, Pseudo-City exposes what waits in the bathroom stall, under the manhole cover

Manhole cover

A manhole cover is a removable plate forming the lid over the opening of a manhole, to prevent anyone from falling in and to keep unauthorized persons out....

 and in the corporate boardroom, all in a way that can only be described as mind-bogglingly irreal. Set in an imaginary, "post-real" metropolis, this book delivers a hauntingly satirical version of our own mediatized reality.

Table of Contents

• Pseudofolliculitis City
• Hairware, Inc.
• Synchronicity III
• The Rorschach-Interpreter
• Portrait of the Founder
• The Meeting
• The Thumb
• Extermination
• Dandies & Flâneurs
• Classroom Dynamics
• In the Bathroom
• The Widow’s Peaks
• Duel
• Deli
• Intermezzo
• Bourgeois Man
• Cereal Killers
• Fascists
• The Autopsy
• Protractor Men
• Haberdashery
• The Personalities
• The Other Pedestrian
• PCP
• The Snore
• The Kitchen
• When The Law Has Spoken
• The Stick Figure
• Horoscope

External links

• Official D. Harlan Wilson Website
• Review by Susie Hawes at SFReader.com
• Review by Mary Pat Mann at Mytholog
• Study Guide for Pseudo-City
• Interview with Wilson at Rose & Thorn Magazine