VAS: An Opera in Flatland
A Novel. By Steve Tomasula. Art and Design by Stephen Farrell.

370 pages
|
illustrated throughout
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5 1/4 x 9 1/4
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© 2002
Review Quotes
American Book Review
"This constitutes a leap forward for the genre we call ’novel.’ Collapsing nonfiction into fiction, women’s reproductive concerns into men’s, history into present, work into play--this novel takes juxtaposition and digression to new heights."
Design Observer
"A tour de force of narrative typography."
Adam Jones | Review of Contemporary Fiction
"Reading VAS, I felt pushed a bit higher above our own cultural Flatland, an experience both disturbing and enlightening, and one for which I am grateful."
Rain Taxi
"Typographically inventive. . .and visually brilliant—incorporating photos, illustrations, diagrams, charts, and graphic art—VAS: An Opera in Flatland redesigns the novel, taking it to a dimension beyond the one in which it ordinarily lives."
Eugene Thacker | Leonardo
"A hybrid of fiction, biotechnology, science studies, the history of biology, aphorisms and even a touch of the comic book. . . . VAS is a welcome and innovative contribution to the ongoing discussion and debate on biotechnology and the posthuman, principally because it invents a unique grammar for engaging with the complex issues presented by biotechnology."
Charles Bernstein
"With striking visual aplomb, VAS casts factoids off the steps of the Temples of the Predetermined into the yet-to-be-written name of errant possibility."
Marjorie Perloff
"Tomasula’s imagination, his satiric edge, his wildly comic sense of things, combined with Farrell’s inventive page lay-out make reading this ’Opera in Flatland’ an unforgettable experience."
Rikki Ducornet
"A breathtaking inquiry into the artifacts of the human imagination, VAS . . . is sensuous, ferocious, and original."
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