midnight's simulacra,

It was at first about the science. It became about the cash. Then it was about personal LSD supplies, and then the world's LSD supply. We didn't intend to become a nuclear power; doing so proved counterproductive.

But understand, please: it was always about the science.

Michael Luis Bolaño is the scion of Mexican oil wealth gone to rut in Texas. Sherman Spartacus Katz is the hyperliterate son of evangelical eccentrics from the North Georgia mountains. One hopes to restore what's been lost, the other to attain what never was. Together they train as engineers; together they study forbidden teachings. By graduation, they're formidably competent, audacious to a fault, ungovernable.

Need illicit precursors? Biosynthesize them in yeast. Need souped-up wheelchairs? Disarm the governors. Need enriched uranium? CO₂ TEA lasers in the garage. Where there's a black market, they disrupt it. Where there's no black market, they create one.

midnight's simulacra is a hysterical, scientifically rigorous, slow burn of a thriller, a modern picaresque, a portrait of autists as young men, and unlike any other novel you've read.