BLACK HELICOPTERS is the second in Caitlín R. Kiernan’s TINFOIL DOSSIER trilogy. I wrote about the first part, AGENTS OF DREAMLAND, in September 2021 and, upon starting BLACK HELICOPTERS, imagined it’d be narratively and stylistically in the same vein.
That was a poor assumption to make.
AGENTS OF DREAMLAND is very weird, but its high-concept, futurist Lovecraftian ideas are told in — relatively speaking — more conventional storytelling terms. I’ll briefly say that both books deal with scientific hubris, parapsychic humans, outer world threats, and the fear of the unknown.
BLACK HELICOPTERS sees matters escalate wildly, both concerning in-world events, how humanity reacts to it, as well as Kiernan’s approach to the material. It’s wildly fragmented and opaque, racing through dialogue and internal monologues and depictions of the unearthly, never stopping to explain itself. There are numerous exchanges in French that are never translated to the reader when reading it, and the reader is not given enough context to quite make sense of it. (That said, translations are available at the end of the book, but in a way that matches the tone and experimental style of the rest of the novella.)
BLACK HELICOPTERS reads like a fresh, modern, queer fusion of weird fiction filtered through a MONDO 2000 mindset. It expects a lot from the reader and, given how brilliant and multifaceted Kiernan is, you’ll almost always be falling below the author’s expectations, but that’s okay! It’s so smart, so vibrant, so unique both in voice and setting and exploration that you will feel compelled to continue reading, even if you’re completely and utterly bewildered.
https://publishing.tor.com/blackhelicopters-caitlinrkiernan/9781250191137/