Reza Negarestani's only novel is a work unto itself. Negarestani has written something truly weird here, a blending of the genres of horror, fiction, and philosophy so dense and confounding that it leaves one with the impression that you can't have understood it properly. The influence of Deleuze and Guattari is obvious, with some chapter names playing on Deleuzian terms, and at least one chapter beginning with a quote from A Thousand Plateaus. Equally obvious is the influence of H. P. Lovecraft.
Negarestani begins his book in an appropriately strange way. Rather than launching directly into the plot, Cyclonopedia starts with a section titled incognitum hactenus. Google translates this as “up to now unknown”. Negarestani describes it as “not known yet or nameless and without origin until now”. This section takes place from the viewpoint of a suicide girl (the kink, not a literal suicide) lured to Istanbul via the promise of money by a mysterious client she met in an online forum. She finds a manuscript and other items belonging to one Reza Negarestani, whom she investigates. It turns out she has found the manuscript for Cyclonopedia, which she presumably takes back to the US and has published.
Describing the book is difficult. It's similar in some ways to Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, in that nearly every sentence contains some cryptic reference or strange term. Both books contain many references to numerology and gematria and both deal with global conspiracies and forbidden knowledge. However, everything in Foucault's Pendulum hints at being tongue in cheek, and one can get the impression that Eco is subtly laughing at anyone who takes this stuff seriously. That impression isn't conveyed by Negarestani, who seems to treat things somewhere between earnestness and metaphor. As if he's saying “Take it literally or figuratively if that helps you understand my point better, I won't explain it to you.”
Negarestani's influences are a strange mishmash. He takes as primary inspiration the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. He references Lovecraft's short story The Festival, as well as Michel Houellebecq's biography of Lovecraft, Against the World, Against Life. He references Deleuze and Guattari multiple times throughout the text, and the chapter “Machines Are Digging” begins with a quote from A Thousand Plateaus. Therefore, anyone wanting to prepare for reading this book should read at least a few of Lovecraft's more indicative works and the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The book almost reads like a parody of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, although it seems less interested in humor than in conveying a similar sense of intellectual playfulness.
The book is extremely contextual. Many books, even dense philosophical tracts, have sections that can stand on their own and be largely understood without supporting materials. One struggles to find a similarly independent section of Cyclonopedia. Once one starts reading, one has to keep going until the end of a section or chapter is reached, or else risk losing the thread. Negarestani's prose is strange and otherworldly, sometimes being made up of more invented words and crytologisms than actual words. Take this passage for instance:
Although X and Y approach each other in opposite directions, they synergistically assemble the Gog-Magog Axis as a decimal system knitted on occult tellurian social dynamics. The Axis is assembled through the folding of the peaks and troughs as X and Y slide on their oily bedrock (call it Pipeline Odyssey or the Devil's Excrement) toward each other. Eventually, X and Y pleat their syzygies into one fold: the dam of the God and Magog, the 45-36 or 9-0 composition. The entire panorama is a complicity between X, Y and anonymous materials.
A particular thing Negarestani loves is the use of homonyms for interesting, somewhat tongue-in-cheek observations. Why these work is hard to describe. Each one seems to require a great deal of explanation. You'd just have to read it for yourself to properly understand. An example is, during a discussion of the relationship between oil and the Middle East, a demonic entity is referred to as “holey” rather than “holy”, which works because the chapter's title is “Machines Are Digging” and it largely discusses oil extraction, and the term feeds into the term “()hole complex” which is used throughout the book.
Finding separate points that can be elucidated independently of the other material is somewhat difficult (in part because there was a lot that evaded me), but an example of one of the clearer points is this. Negarestani claims that Western powers make a fundamental mistake in their conception of Middle Eastern warfare. While Western warfare typically attempts conquest (of a location, resource or people), Middle Eastern guerillas don't always fight with the Western conception of victory in mind. Jihadists don't care about capturing and holding a city. In fact, according to Negarestani, jihadists may even attempt to draw enemies into fighting in a city, rather than fending them off. The goal, in that case, is to create a war-complex that envelops the city, hopefully destroying the invaders, the city and even the jihadis themselves. The jihadis are fully committed to dying, not only if it's necessary but possibly even as the optimal outcome. Creating a vortex that destroys everything is the ultimate expression of Islamic apocalypticism.
A good tip for reading the book is to look in the index at the first instance of an unfamiliar term. While Negarestani sometimes does define his terms in the body of the text, he almost always does that after using the term dozens of times. For instance, the term “polytics” first appears on page 32 and is used numerous times before Negarestani offers the definition “…dracolatry, or the middle-eastern model of politics (aka polytics)…” on page 172. The smart thing to do is to look in the index for any unfamiliar term in hopes that Negarestani has provided a definition. That can greatly clarify the reading, at least in regards to the Negarestanisms.
Interestingly, while the book was billed as a horror/philosophical novel, the horror element was almost entirely lacking. There was essentially nothing in the book that could qualify as scary unless you find the ideas described within it to be horrific. That seems to be more of a problem with Negarestani's interlocutors than with Negarestani himself. The book is also relatively far towards the theory side of the novel/theory spectrum. Similar books that attempt a synthesis philosophy and fiction (for instance, Robert Sawyer's Mindscan) typically fall well to the side of fiction. Mindscan is first and foremost a science fiction book with a philosophically influenced plot. Cyclonopedia is first and foremost a book of political and historical philosophy, with a thin veneer of fiction overlaying the product.
The book was altogether very interesting. Negarestani presented something truly new and unique, and many of the ideas (at least the comprehensible ones) were novel and thought-provoking. However, the book was challenging. It isn't suitable for anyone who isn't prepared to do some pre- or post-reading. Capitalism and Schizophrenia seems to be the theodolite necessary to properly comprehend the book. On the positive side, reading this prompted me to purchase both volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and I'm currently reading Anti-Oedipus, so I have Negarestani to thank(?) for beating me into submission where reading Deleuze and Guattari are concerned.
Finally, the reading list. Negarestani doesn't directly quote or mention many books or authors here, but those few seem quite interesting. The aforementioned two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Deleuze and Guattari are at the top of the list, closely followed by the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft. Additionally, Houellebecq's biography of Lovecraft, Against the World, Against Life and (strangely) the paper and book The Deep, Hot Biosphere by Thomas Gold. This book sounds absolutely wild. It apparently postulates that there could be a deep, hot biosphere miles below the surface of the Earth where bacteria create oil and other hydrocarbons. While the theory has never really gained a large following, it's extremely interesting and runs deeply counter to the traditional “compression over long time” theory. Additionally, Negarestani cites one film, Begotten.