Beyond the Planet of the Vampires

What this prismatic avant-garde horror novel from Baer (Midwestern Infinity Doctrine) lacks in an easily summarizable story, it narrowly makes up for with stylistic adventurousness. Set in the year 3000, the plot ostensibly concerns a B-movie–style invasion of psychic vampires who drain hapless victims psychologically as well as physically. This setup is interwoven with slippery visions of gut-churning violence and queer sex, meditations on Kant and Plato, and scenes of the apocalypse. The narrator goes through several changes of consciousness as the world collapses around him and the plot finally melts into a conclusion more concerned with subconscious wanderings than with a clear description of events. Baer combines poetry, fragments, and hallucinogenic travelogue, and though it takes work to construct a story from the many disparate threads, readers may enjoy a gestalt of conflicting emotions if they make their way through this fantasmagoria. Baer’s descriptions of physical desire are the novel’s high points, and the prose is never more focused than when it’s zeroed in on the body. Readers up for the challenge will be rewarded with plentiful idiosyncratic word play, poetic turns of phrase, and haunting images. (June)