Beware of shifts in time or gravity.
The time fluctuations that cause people to relive entire days and gravity storms that can uproot trees and send Velcro stock skyrocketing are two examples of the fantastical nature of Sean Murphy's novel, The Time of New Weather.
But they're more than weather effects meant to wreak havoc on the main characters' journey across the United States toward a raging war in Antarctica. They're stark metaphors for an important topical issue on Murphy's mind. The whole novel is his inspired way of protesting the state of affairs in America.
He said the gravity and time themes are related to the environmental situation.
"We've gotten to the point where we're managing to screw up what we've always thought of as fundamental elements of reality, like the weather or the atmosphere or the water," Murphy said. "The ice caps are melting, and sea levels are changing. It's absurd, but it's happening."
It's just one of several issues the author addresses in his book.
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The story's hard to categorize, but here it goes: It's a postmodern, existential, politically satirical, romantic dark comedy adventure - like a mixture of "Star Wars," HBO's macabre series "Carnivale" and George Orwell's classic 1984.
The story begins with the American government being purchased in a corporate takeover. The America Corporation, as it's thereafter known, is run strictly as a profit-making venture by Ransom Stonefellow II, CEO of Consolidated Power and Petroleum, a division of the Morlock Manufacturing Consortium and the J.P. Morgan Tobacco Company.
A protest group rises up in rebellion, and the massive plot leads them all the way to the "Golf War" being fought on the suddenly not-so-cold terrain of Antarctica.
It's weirder than it sounds, as a fleet of old people and circus folk join on the rebellion. But it's all topical and relevant, Murphy said, to the state of America today.
"I can't even believe what's happened in this country," he said. "I can't believe that we're waging pre-emptive war in other countries. We've never done that in our history. I can't believe that we're limiting civil liberties and that we've got people in prison in Guantanamo Bay for years who have never seen a lawyer. I can't believe that there are laws on the books that people can go to the library and check out my reading habits."
Murphy has been a political activist for most of his adult life. In 1986 he spent nine months walking across the country with a group called The Great Peace March. The march protested nuclear weapons, stopping at churches and schools to give talks and demonstrations.
"It was very empowering," Murphy said. "Actually, a group from The Great Peace March went over to Russia, and amazingly, the Russian government let them do a peace march there. They also featured the first rock concerts in Russia surrounding this walk."
He said a couple years later, the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet empire crumbled.
"Now, I'm not saying it was because of us, but we had some unquantifiable 'something' to do with it," he said.
Today, Murphy's writing is his megaphone. His work isn't anti-Bush or anti-partisan, he said, because "a lot of these issues don't have anything to do with whether you're for one side of the political spectrum or the other."
The America Corporation, with its announcement of a video game to train young people for combat or its plan to change the Earth's name to Planet America, represents what Murphy sees as a scary trend in the United States.
"The fact that there's too much corporate influence on what's supposed to be a freely operating democracy has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat," he said. "The fact that the environment's all screwed up to the point where the weather's changing has nothing to do with political parties. It's across the board."
A reading by Sean Murphy
The Time of New Weather
SUB Acoma, A&B
Friday, 7 p.m.
