Pop Heresiarchs (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780648269908)

Pop Heresiarchs is an exercise in Borgesian fabulation. It takes the fanatical attachments of rock and pop music, processes them through the armature of critical theory and spits out a bunch of conspiratorial 'what if' musings on the other side.

What if David Bowie had organised his career according to the occult dictates of the kabbalah? Were the Beatles a mind control project run by the highly secretive Baphomet Order? Was Jimi Hendrix involved in a DARPA sonic weapons programme which blew back on him in a manner familiar from Paul Virilio's 'museum of accidents'? What if Jim Morrison discovered the secret of immortality from Antonin Artaud and faked his own death? Who really shot John Lennon and in what universe? All these questions and more find their rich and strange answers in ex-style journalist Steve Beard's fantastical collection of themed short stories. It's a weird one...

If you like Howard Waldrop, you'll love Steve Beard. Bruce Sterling calls him 'a thorny weed in the parking lot of postmodernity.' Others reckon he's a literary blagger. Whatever! He features in The Big Book of Cyberpunk and London: City of Disappearances.