Steve Tomasula: The Art and Science of New Media Fiction

David Banash is Professor of English at Western Illinois University, USA. He is the author of Collage Culture: Readymades, Meaning, the Age of Consumption (2013) and co-editor of Contemporary Collecting: Objects, Practices, and the Fate of Things (2013). His essays and reviews have appeared in American Book Review, Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life, Science Fiction Studies, Paradoxa, PopMatters, Postmodern Culture, Reconstruction, and the Iowa Review.

David Banash and this excellent collection do more than bring Steve Tomasula’s astounding work to a wider audience. This book reveals the multiform layers of interlacing aesthetics that, like a tumor, a clock, a biological accident, and the birth of the alphabet, assemble into patterns that are playful, enigmatic, and wondrous. Tomasula was once the best-kept secret in contemporary narrative. Now, his work is suitably viral.

• 1. “Variations on a Theme”: the (re)Invention of the Human in Vas: An Opera in FlatlandSylvie Bauer (Université Rennes 2, France)2. The Great American Novel: System UpdateKathi Inman Berens (University of Southern California, Annenberg School of Communication, USA)3. Tomasula's BookR. M. Berry (Florida State University, USA)4. Fabrications in a Complex Mirror: Steve Tomasula's Turbulent FictionGerald Bruns (University of Notre Dame, USA)5. Literary Archaeologies in The Book of PortraitureFlore Chevaillier (Central State University, USA)6. The Material Is the Message: Body as Text/Text as Body in Steve Tomasula's VAS: An Opera in FlatlandAnthony Enns (Dalhousie University, Canada)7. A Book, an Atlas, and an Opera: Steve Tomasula's Fictions of Science as Science FictionPawel Frelik (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland)8. Spatiality and Print, Temporality and Digital Media: Media-Specific Strategies in Steve Tomasula's The Book of Portraiture and TOCN. Katherine Hayles (Duke University, USA)9. The Work of Art After the Mechanical AgeMary Holland (SUNY, New Paltz, USA)10. Intermediality in Steve Tomasula's TOC: A New Media Novel: A Semiological AnalysisAnne Hurault-Paupe (Paris 13 University, France)11. Exploration and Discovery Through Visuality in Steve Tomasula's The Book of PortraiturePelin Iscan (University of Strasbourg, France)12. Do We Not Bleed? The Color of Flesh in a Cyborg WorldAnne Larue (University Paris 13-Sorbonne Paris Cité, France)13. Ontological Metalepses, Unnatural Narratology, & Locality: A Politics of the [[page]] in Tomasula's VAS & TOCLance Olsen (University of Utah, USA)14. 'Still, It Moves' : The Subreal Fiction of Steve TomasulaJackie Orr (Syracuse University, USA)15. Enumeration in Steve Tomasula's Short StoriesFrançoise Palleau-Papin (University of Paris 13-Sorbonne Paris Cité, France)16. Encoding the Body, Questioning Legacy: Reflections on Intersemiotic Experiments in Steve Tomasula's VAS: An Opera in FlatlandFrançoise Sammarcelli (University of Paris Sorbonne, France)17. Steve Tomasula's Work of WonderAnne-Laure Tissut (Rouen University, France)Afterword—An Interview with Steve TomasulaBibliography Index