An idyllic family summer in bucolic northern Michigan takes a turn when a playwright (Lisa) discovers a dusty Apple Lisa 2 computer in the closet of her aunt's cottage. Seduced by the retro '80s kitsch of this early Mac prototype, Lisa boots it up it to infuse new blood into her otherwise stagnating writing. But as the resulting scripts genre-switch to horror, is this Lisa's exploratory stab at a new direction, or is she under the shape-shifting spell of this Lisa 2? Which Lisa scripts the play that portends an inauspicious destiny?
Enter David, by day the operator of a shady business that re-enacts traumatic episodes to psychologically give new outcomes in his client's minds. A toxic paranoia sets in as David suspects his wife is becoming infected by this diabolical Lisa 2 contraption. Caught in the middle is David and Lisa's young daughter, acutely tuned to the lurking crisis unfolding in the cottage. David attempts a “re-iteration” to cleanse his home of this technological terror, though self-scripting these re-iterations ventures into new territory with unknown consequences. What lengths is Lisa willing to go to protect her babies, both of the flesh and on paper?
«With the paranoia of Philip K. Dick and the artistry of Cassavettes, Lisa 2, v1.0 burrows into you 3D-pipes-screensaver style. Diabolically split into two vantage points, each narrative reads as if it’s not only a palimpsest of the other, a translucent möbius strip, but infected even further by the evil computer in the closet. A brilliant and horrifying techno-drama about the often glitchy line between identity and the things we live among.»—David Kuhnlein, author of Bloodletter and Die Closer to Me
«Lisa 2.0, v.1.0 is the Yooper retro-tech triller I didn’t know I needed. Nicholas Rombes’s creepy af new novel evokes nostalgia and horror in equal measure, and it asks us to confront what makes them both so attractive. Though set in the present day, every page brought me back to those halcyon days when we didn’t need A.I. because we had text adventures on the C=64. It also made me a little afraid of the Mac on which I wrote this blurb.»—Andrew Ervin, author of Burning Down George Orwell’s House
«Lisa 2, v1.0 is a book of disquiet; of possession and dispossession, reiterations (a keyword here) and doublings—a twisted family romance. It is also a cautionary tale about the danger of doctoring or erasing the past, and the inevitable return of the repressed. Or is it? In this hauntological thriller that haunts itself, Nicholas Rombes explores how the process of duplication initiated by art can so easily get out of hand. All you need is a vintage computer and a little nostalgia for an age of horror yet to come. It reminded me of McCarthy (Tom) and Nabokov as much as Lynch and Kubrick. Rombes is a singular talent, who is quietly ploughing his own eerie furrow. This has got cult classic written all over it.
—Andrew Gallix, author of Unwords and editor of 3:AM Magazine
accompanying soundtrack by Mike Shiflet
(also available on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.):
