The Secrets of the Lands Without
Two friends with a passion for machines of antiquity, discover a strange apparatus in the Athens flea market. It consists of a metal hemisphere and, according to its seller, it as found on the island of Patmos, a relic from a New Age community that once lived there. It is Sunday, just like in the Book of Revelation, when St. John had his famous apocryphal vision in Patmos…
Taking it hastily back to their makeshift “lab”, they begin to experiment in understanding how it works. The Machine has come with three disks whose information they are trying to decipher. After many failed attempts, they begin to suspect that the Machine might be coming from another dimension; indeed that it maybe a subjective machine, whose function depends on its user’s inner desires.Gradually, as they allow themselves to be absorbed into the Machine’s influence, they are enveloped by strange apparitions. They fall into lucid dream states and enter a dark world, a familiar and yet distorted version of modern society. They follow the adventures of Nick, an insomniac resident of a city calledNecropolis…
Necropolis is situated somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Theosophus Lebabis a mysterious, semi-god being who rules the air waves through his media empire. Most importantly, he controls the production of orgone – a new energy form based on the utilisation of bio-energy. His Lebab Tower, stupendous skyscraper, is the landmark of Necropolis. Elsewhere around the globe anarchy prevails. Governments are unable to establish law and order. Subsaharan countries are run by armed gangs who trade “orgonoliths” (orgone stones), the fuel of orgone generators.Only in a string of remote islands on the Pacific Ocean there seems to be some token of tranquillity. There, colonisation has taken place by a secret society of Gnostics and Magicians, deniers of modern technology. They call themselves the”Lands Without”…
When the novel was published in 1994 it was concurrently released on the Internet, and it is considered the “first Greek novel on the Internet“.
Greece: Alexandria (1994), Kedros (1996)
REVIEWS
The first Greek cyberpunk novel. “The Secrets of the Lands Without” by George Zarkadakis have all the answers and freaked-out Gibson eats their dust.
MAX
MAX
Mutant extermination teams, cosmic fruit machines, orgone radiation accumulators, as well as apocryphal references to the Prophecy of Revelation and Madame Blavatski compose a parallel reality…the onslaught of pictures and new ideas not only they do not tire the reader but, on the contrary, they carry one away charmingly, to a world of relentless as well as intense mental “erection”… the book is highly recommended. In connection to the celebrations for the 1900 years since the writing of the Revelation by St. John in Patmos, it is a “must” for the summer.
ALL NUDE
ALL NUDE
George Zarkadakis with his first novel proves that, apart from his knowledge, he has a great ability in the use of language and the creation of amazingly vivid visions which carry the reader into a trip, sometimes terrible, sometimes even romantic…
EGO
The expert of futurism… signs here the first Greek New Age novel.
KAI
..without false pretences and with full knowledge, a very interesting novel indeed.
KLIK
George Zarkadakis tries his powers into a genre absent from the interests of contemporary Greek literature, he knows his stuff very well and has many original ideas… he “captures” the reader…ELEFTHEROTYPIA
George Zarkadakis controls his scientific background and keeps clear of technical terminology whist adopting a popular idiom to give pleasant and convincing pages which contain both humour and suppleness.
KATHIMERINI
George Zarkadakis immerses himself into an orgasmic dance between microcosm and macrocosm, quantum mechanics and relativity. In the “Lands Without” he juxtaposes six-breasted strippers with the biogenetic experiments of professor Aristides, the ideas of Steven Hawking, Wilhem Reich and orgone, the Anthropic Principle and Jung’s animus and anima…
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