King of the Worlds M. Thomas Gammarino 9781634059084

This dark comedy explores the lost universes of disgraced idol Dylan Greenyears. Dylan had always wanted to live as many lives as he could-that was the appeal of being an actor. But at the end of a brief stint as a Hollywood heartthrob, Dylan loses the lead in Titanic and exiles himself and his wife to a recently settled exoplanet called New Taiwan. At first, life beyond Earth seems uncannily un-wondrous. Dylan teaches at an American prep school, raises a family with his high school sweetheart, and lives out his restlessness through literature. But then a box of old fan mail (and the hint of a galaxy-wide conspiracy) offers Dylan a chance to recapture the past. As he tries to balance this transdimensional midlife crisis against family life, Dylan encounters a cast of extraordinary characters: a supercomputer with aspirations of godhood, a Mormon-fundamentalist superfan, an old-school psychoanalyst, a sampling of his alternate selves, and, once again, the love of his lives. King of the Worlds throws cosmology, technology, nineties pop culture, and religion into an existential blender for a mix that is by turns tragic and absurd, elegiac and filled with wonder. M. Thomas Gammarino is the author of the novel Big in Japan and the novella Jellyfish Dreams. His short fiction has appeared in the New York Tyrant, Tinfish, Word Riot, and the Hawai'i Review, among others. In 2014, Gammarino received the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Hawaii's highest literary honor. He lives and teaches in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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About the Author
M. Thomas Gammarino is the author of King of the Worlds, Jellyfish Dreams, and Big in Japan. He received the Elliot Cades Award for Literature, Hawaii's highest literary honor, in 2014.

Reviews
"When we recompose ourselves on distant planets we cannot help but re-inscribe an inner landscape in which we battle the familiar bug-eyed monsters: anxiety, unfaithfulness, regret, high-school drama students, interstellar Mormons, and ourselves. All we can hope for it is to find ourselves resensitized and that is Mr. Gammarino's triumph in this richly funny spaceship of a book." -- Paul Park, author of All Those Vanished Engines and The Princess of Roumania "Dylan Greenyears' story is so full of humanity that the otherworldly dimensions, alien characters and alternate histories become a well-made container for the breadth and scope of our most keen longings. Effortlessly original, sharply drawn, comically wise, King of the Worlds launches the reader across the cosmos on a hilariously tormented and seriously fun adventure." -- A.A. Attanassio, author Radix and The Last Legends of Earth "Smart, sharp and funny. A dazzling tour of the multiverse." -- Robert Onopa, author of The Pleasure Tube and 2020 "King of the Worlds is an amazingly imaginative, whirling performance of a novel, at turns firmly grounded and absurd, hilarious and heartbreaking. M. Thomas Gammarino is not like other writers. And that's a good thing: there's so much energy, madness and intelli- gence in this book...a thrill and a joy to read." -- Peter Mountford, author of The Dismal Science and A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism "...hints of other greats like Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace...represent some of the funnest aspects of a novel that takes its fun pretty seriously...It's almost like looking back in time to a literary landscape that is long gone now. Or maybe into the future." -- Art Edwards, Entropy Magazine



Book Information
ISBN 9781634059084
Author M. Thomas Gammarino
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Broken Levee Books
Publisher Chin Music Press
Weight(grams) 708g