Pop Apocalypse

March 9, 2009
A wastoid playboy gets sucked into a funny and paranoid near-future misadventure in Konstantinou's entertaining debut. In the near future—the 2000s are vintage but not forgotten—the Internet has evolved into the mediasphere, which allows lives to be followed so closely that names are traded like stocks on a Reputations Exchange. Eliot Vanderthorpe Jr. is a longtime screwup, the high-profile party-animal son of Eliot Sr., who runs the company behind the mediasphere. After Eliot Sr. takes his son's name public as a way to control his erratic behavior, the younger Eliot hooks up with a branding expert who attempts to drive up his IPO. Soon enough, Eliot discovers another Eliot living in the off-limits Occupied Zone of Northern California. Things get very crazy very quickly once Eliot sets out to confront his doppelgänger, and the conspiracy he uncovers has a very long, twisted reach. This playful and witty novel takes our celebrity-obsessed and media-hijacked culture, mixes in geopolitics and a dash of cyberpunk dystopia to create an intelligent and blistering what-if.

May 1, 2009
In the near future, the world is about to witness a war between the U.S.-led Freedom Coalition and a Middle Eastern caliphate, with total coverage already optioned by the major media, including the Holy Land Channel. For celebrity heir Eliot Vanderthorpe Jr., however, the event barely registers, due to a summer of wanton fornication and drug-laden partying. When Eliots hard-core evangelical Christian father insists on polishing his sons image with a job in his multibillion-dollar corporation, Eliots life takes an ominous turn. In the corporations classified database, which is connected to Homeland Security, Eliot discovers footage of a California man resembling himself in every detail, and his ensuing quest to track the peripatetic doppelgnger from Berkeley to the Holy Land results in the jarring revelation that his Rapture-obsessed father plans to stage the Apocalypse on live TV unless Eliot and his friends can stop him. Konstantinous dazzling debut generates laughs while deliciously skewering todays hyperkinetic media, religious zealotry, and international politics. One of the most mordantly funny satires of the new millennium.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)