Tetra - by Malcolm McNeill (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Collected for the first time, Malcolm Mc Neill's visionary 1970s graphic novel 'Tetra' - An auteur's science fiction with a new introduction and chronicle of methods, trials, and censorship. Featuring never-before-seen concept art, recollections of William S. Burroughs, Isaac Asimov, 'girlie' magazines, Stanley Kubrick, glue, Star Trek, aliens, and nakedness...

"Tetra was a late 70s proto-cyberpunk transreal skin-mag SF epic serialized graphic novel starring a naked woman with no hair and a penchant for running-dialog wisecracks. The art is lovely, and language play of the alien characters is worth the price of admission alone." - Rudy Rucker

"Star Wars, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune were all about the messianic 'Chosen One' - the individual come to save the world. I just wanted a heroine who said f*ck all that." - Malcolm Mc Neill

Review Quotes

"Tetra was a late 70s proto-cyberpunk transreal skin-mag SF epic serialized graphic novel starring a naked woman with no hair and a penchant for running-dialog wisecracks. The art is lovely, and language play of the alien characters is worth the price of admission alone. As an added part of the fun we have Malcolm Mc Neill's ruminative introduction which includes unblinking memories of the freakazoid Disco Era, and of William S. Burroughs, with whom he labored to produce the legendary unfinished graphic novel Ah Pook Is Here." - Rudy Rucker, author of the Ware Tetralogy.

"Serialized in the 1970s, Malcolm Mc Neill's incomparable work of esoterica maps the terrain that would be excavated by Alan Moore in the 1980s and beyond. This first-edition collection includes an introduction and afterword by the author and artist that provides insight into the composition of the comic as well as the historical context out of which it emerged; scholars of the form will find it as enjoyable as it is enlightening. Surreal, erotic, operatic, and influenced by Mc Neill's longtime relationship with William S. Burroughs, Tetra presages the graphic-novel standard that increasingly defines the flows of technologized culture and desire." - D. Harlan Wilson, author of J.G. Ballard: Modern Master of Science Fiction

"Set against a science fiction backdrop, Tetra explores fundamental elements of the human experience, how we connect with others, and what it means to be the authors of our own stories. Mc Neill's introduction and afterward provide a fascinating metatextual exploration of the work, making clear the connections between author and story and explaining challenges relating to content and form. Both intimate and objective, Mc Neill aptly brings this work from the past into the present and even our future." -

Sara Van Ness, author of Watchmen as Literature

"Oh, the illustrations! They're like paintings, hanging by golden frames in the National Museum of the Empire of Sci-Fi! Malcolm McNeill's panels manage to take on a life of their own and look like stills from an alien art film made into a graphic novel." - Thomas Papadimitropoulos, Comicdom