Mosca: A Factual Fiction

by Richard Miller

The buzzing sound you hear just might be Mosca, a counterfeit fly designed to deliver war germs while spying on the enemy. But Mosca escapes his trainers and devotes himself to killing off humanity so... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0965842304
• ISBN13: 9780965842303
• Release Date: November 1997
• Publisher: Synergy International of the Americas
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Richard Miller Rocks

I read Mosca in two sittings with Leonard Cohen's The Future playing in the background. Misanthropy magnified. It's about, like all of Miller's books in one way or another, facing up to the inevitability of our eventual self destruction... maybe I should say apparant inevitability for although there is a fatalistic feeling there is also an undercurrent of potential salvation. Even if it doesn't always go that way there's a feeling that maybe if something was done a little earlier... But anyway fantastically written, It reads to me like human thought on paper... but able to be followed (this is no finnegan's wake) excellent employment of zeugma.

Mosca gives new meaning to the term trip.

William Burroughs said of Miller's "Snail": "Snail is at once delirious & serious... it addresses itself to basic themes of immortality, death, reincarnation & the future of the species." Mosca is no less than a novel addressing itself, often quite humorously, to the end of the human species. Coming to us in New Mexico just in time for the cuartocentenario, a significant part of the novel concerns New Mexico, Onate, the penitentes, moradas and a rakish Santa Sebastiana interacting with Mosca -- a CIA concocted, biogenetically engineered cyber fly. Along with the secret government, Mosca spends time in New Mexico and San Francisco's North Beach preparing to end the human race. As Miller says, the writing is "factual fiction" and is as multi-dimensional as it gets. Mosca gives new meaning to the term "trip" and Miller's intellect and wit are sharper than ever. Carl Hertel for ABQ Arts.

Mosca is funny, horrifying, devastating and so alive.

Let me start by saying I love MOSCA, Richard Miller's latest novel. I've read all his books. When he sent me MOSCA, his tale about a CIA-created, artificial fly who escapes from a creepy lab into the equally corrupt "free world," I read it and entered the Milleresque mindscape. It's remarkable how Miller melds together, collages, footnotes and embroiders the frightening, overwhelming facts most people repress to carry on with "life." MOSCA seems like wild delerium but at its heart it's a witty/serious look at unedited reality. That's why it seems surreal! It's funny, horrifying, devastating and so alive. There's nothing like it anywhere. Get it if you can.

Miller tells a story hard to believe, that rings true.

Let me say first that I am a friend of Richard Miller's, and a big fan. I have read all his work, and my favorite is Bohemia, his 1977 look at the history of youth cultures and movements, a topic that today is real hot. Mosca is his latest novel in which he sets up a situation too wild to be believed, sets it in the world as we know it, and then asks you, is it so wild after all? Mosca is an artificially intelligent psuedo fly creation, who escapes from his/her birthplace, a CIA lab in Virginia, and makes hir way to California. Hir goal - to kill all humans, so the animals may live. Starting with the white males. Taken by a crow messenger to New Mexico, S/he meets Artemis/Diana/ Santa Sebastiana, cursed to live in a wooden statue paraded out once a year by penitantes who reenact the crusifiction of Christ. And so the story begins. Weaving fact and fiction, Miller's great strength, his wild imagination, tells a story hard to believe, and easy to imagine as true. At least some parts of it. And his characters speak out about the unspeakable, the injustices we see all around us and do nothing about, and the beauty and life in small moments we fail to acknowledge. Miller points his magnifying glass and focuses our attention, letting us see the world the way he does, just a little. And what a world it is. I've sat at Parisian cafes tossing money on the ground with Miller just to see the looks on peoples faces when they bend down to pick it up. Can a man who suggests you befriend a stranger in a bar and ask if you can buy them a subcription to a subversive newspaper(Anderson Valley Advertiser) be far from truths you might be interested in? Put this title in your electric shopping cart today and you won't be sorry. And look for other books by Miller. Then pass them on to friends. Noel Olken, filmmaker, Chicago IL

Mosca gives new meaning to the term trip.

William Burroughs said of Miller's "Snail": "Snail is at once delirious & serious...it addresses itself to basic themes of immortality, death, reincarnation & and the future of the species. Mosca is no less than a novel addressing itself, often quite humorously,to the end of the human species. Coming to us in New Mexico just time for the cuartocentenario a significant part of the novel concerns New Mexico, Onate, the penitentes, moradas and a rakish Santa Sebastiana interacting with Mosca - a CIA concoted, biogenetically engineered cyber fly. Along with the secret government, Mosca spends time in New Mexico & San Francisco's North Beach preparing to end the human race. As Miller says, the writing is "factual fictional" and is as multi- dimensional as it gets. Mosca give new meaning to the term "trip" and Miller's intellect and wit are sharper than ever. Carl Hertel for ABQ Arts.