Strange Attractor Press

The Pepsi Cola Addict

June-Alison Gibbons foreword by David Tibet

The legendary lost novel in which fourteenyear-old Preston Wildey-King must choose between his all-consuming passion for Pepsi Cola and his love for schoolmate Peggy.

“He walked into the turbulent super market. There were people everywhere. His eyes swept over the shelves and stabilised on a large stack of Pepsi-colas. He could almost experience the cool fizzy liquid descending his parched throat.”

Written by June-Alison Gibbons when she was only 16, The Pepsi Cola Addict is considered one of the great works of twentieth-century outsider literature. More than just a literary curiosity, however, this tale of a teenager whose passion for a well-known cola drink threatens to ruin his life is the uniquely vivid expression of a young woman trying to make sense of the confusing, often brutal world she in which found herself.

Published in 1982 by a vanity press who took £800 from its young author and gave her only a single book in return, it’s thought that fewer than ten original copies still exist in the world.

Shortly after its publication, June-Alison and her sister Jennifer would become infamous as “The Silent Twins” and find themselves cruelly incarcerated for over a decade in Broadmoor Hospital. This author-approved edition makes June-Alison Gibbon’s remarkable vision widely available for the first time.

June-Alison Gibbons wrote The Pepsi Cola Addict in 1981, when she was 16. She now lives with her family in West Wales.

fiction May 5 x 7 1/2, 152 pp.

US $21.95T/$28.95 CAN paper

978-1-913689-71-1 Distributed for Strange Attractor Press

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Two-Headed Doctor

Listening For Ghosts in Dr. John’s Gris-Gris David Toop

A forensic investigation into a single LP.

Two-Headed Doctor is a forensic investigation into a single LP: Dr. John, the night tripper’s Gris-gris. Though released in 1968 to poor sales and a minimum of critical attention, Gris-gris has accumulated legendary status over subsequent decades for its strangeness, hybridity, and innovative production. Despite the respect given to the record, its making is shrouded in mystery, misunderstandings, and false conclusions. The persona of Dr. John, loosely based on dubious literary accounts of a notorious voodooist and freed slave, provided Malcolm “Mac” Rebennack with a lifelong mask through which to construct a solo career.

Somewhere between puzzle, experimental rhythm, blues disguised as rock, and elaborate hoax, Gris-gris was a collaborative project between Rebennack and producer/arranger Harold Battiste (at the time musical director for Sonny & Cher). A few brief sessions held at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles brought together many of New Orleans’ finest musicians, including Shirley Goodman, John Boudreaux, Plas Johnson, Jessie Hill, Ernest McLean, and Tami Lynn. Along with their complex histories, the cast of characters implicated in the story includes Ornette Coleman, Lafcadio Hearn, Zora Neale Hurston, Cher, Sonny Bono, Sam Cooke, Ishmael Reed, Black Herman, Prince La La, and many others. The story details in discursive style the historical context of the music, how it came together, its literary sources, production and arrangements, and the nature of the recording studio as dream state, but also examines as a disturbing undercurrent the volatile issue of race in twentieth-century music, the way in which it doomed relationships and ambitious projects, exploited great talents, and distorted the cultural landscape.

David Toop is a musician, writer, and Professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is the author of Ocean of Sound, Sinister Resonance, Into the Maelstrom, and other books.

performing arts | music June | 5 3/4 x 8 1/4, 264 pp. | 20 color illus., 20 b&w illus.

US $24.95T/$33.95 CAN paper

978-1-913689-60-5 Distributed for Strange Attractor Press

126 Spring 2023 | mitpress.mit.edu

edited by Gary Zhexi Zhang

A collection of artists, researchers, and interstitial practitioners explore weird temporalities in finance, technology, and catastrophe.

Once, financial practitioners plied a hybrid trade as hydrologists, star-gazers, and weather-watchers who sought to discover the natural laws of value and exchange as they did the divine order of an unchanging nature. Today, corporate firms hire trend forecasters and scenario planners to play out strategic fictions in virtual worlds. Hurricane and drought insurance markets offer investment instruments tied to a turbulent climate as a hedge against the risks of the stock market. And for financial astrologers operating on Wall Street, celestial motions provide a cosmic mapping that orients the mood of terrestrial markets.

Through essays and interviews, Catastrophe Time! pays attention to the conditions of speculative knowledge, whether through modeling or intuition, exploring its pitfalls and its potentials. Traversing a gray zone between rigorous research and operative science fictions, its contributors question how practices of speculation may transform, undermine, and at times exceed, the worlds they set out to model.

Edited by artist Gary Zhexi Zhang, Catastrophe Time! explores the power of practical fictions—whether currencies, cults, or forecasts—in the shaping of fragmented temporalities. By bringing together researchers and writers working at the boundaries of temporal practices, including Diann Bauer, Philip Grant, Chiara di Leone, William Kherbek, Klara Kofen, Kei Kreutler, Suhail Malik, and Bassem Saad, this urgent volume seeks to make sense of the unraveling moment in which we live.

Gary Zhexi Zhang is a visual artist and writer whose work explores social infrastructures, technical histories, and conceptual systems. He was born in China, grew up in Birmingham, and is currently based in London. He studied at Glasgow School of Art, Cambridge University, and MIT.

art | current events May | 4 1/2 x 7 1/4, 192 pp. | 10 color illus., 20 b&w illus.

US $21.95T/$28.95 CAN paper

978-1-913689-67-4 Distributed for Strange Attractor Press Arthur Pendragon and C. J. Stone

foreword by Ronald Hutton

A bracing biography of Arthur Uthar Pendragon: ecocampaigner, neo-druid leader, and living incarnation of the mythical King Arthur of British legend.

Looks like a tramp. Says he’s a King. Meet Arthur— eco-warrior and protector of standing stones. An ex-squaddie and biker turned spiritual leader, “battle chieftan” of The Council of British Druid Orders, and parliamentary candidate, some would claim he is also the legendary King Arthur, returned at last to revive the wasteland and protect its sacred sites from the intrusion of the heritage industries. Don’t believe it? Then join him on his quest, through fields and forests, to the mythical Britain that rests behind the facade of an increasingly empty consumer culture. Regardless of whether you believe he is who he says he is, one thing is certain: he’s the best Arthur we have.

Co-written by C. J. Stone, a legendary chronciler of British underground culture, and Arthur himself, this new edition of the The Trials of Arthur presents the fullest account of Arthur’s almost mythic life to date, and includes a foreword by renowned historian Ronald Hutton.

Arthur Uther Pendragon (born John Timothy Rothwell, 5 April 1954) is a British eco-campaigner, Neo-Druid leader, media personality, and self-declared reincarnation of King Arthur. He was the “battle chieftain” of the Council of British Druid Orders. C. J. Stone is an author, journalist, freelance writer and renowned chronicler of the varied countercultures of contemporary Britain. He is best known for his books Fierce Dancing: Adventures in the Underground (1996), The Last of the Hippies (1999), and his columns for The Guardian and The Big Issue.

biography | autobiography June | 5 3/4 x 8 1/4, 368 pp. | 20 color illus., 20 b&w illus.

US $21.95T/$28.95 CAN paper

978-1-913689-69-8 Distributed for Strange Attractor Press

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