G.S. RICHTER
PROBLEMATIC FICTION FOR
PROBLEMATIC PEOPLE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G. S. Richter is the author of Solitude and Its Enemies, Men as Lovers, Let the Devil In, The Wrong Planet, All the Dead Comedians, In Fear of Praise, and Nihil's Retina.
Since the winter of 2022, he has completed drafts of five more novellas. Working titles include Pheromones of War, Exit the Void, The Problem with Enchantment, The Voracious Ones, and Policing. Plus, a novel called Entrails. (Great title, right?)
Presently, he maintains (poorly) a Substack page for his writings and musings, link here. Previously, he has written for a collective of writers on Substack called American Letter Mail Co. as well as music reviews and other garbage for Toilet ov Hell. He does not enjoy the Sonoran Desert.
LET THE DEVIL IN
Brezhnev is a disgraced cop whose punishment includes exile to a village out on the steppe. In this place where nothing interesting ever happens, he acts as the village notary and interim gravedigger.
When he is recalled to the city to serve jury duty for a rape trial, he meets a woman in the jury pool who will challenge his ability to remain amoral in the face of injustice.
2023
ISBN 9798368034317
SOLITUDE AND ITS ENEMIES
A lone man's wish to disappear from society is complicated by a few inconvenient factors. Among them: A revolution, a counter-revolution, his wayward brother, and the strange woman he begins to see everywhere, who may or may not be an apparition.
His ultimate freedom hinges upon finding some way to make this woman disappear.
2023
ISBN 9798367127478
THE WRONG PLANET
Designer genetics: mankind’s salvation or its ruin?
Seth Michaud isn’t sure. Which is strange, considering his work as a psychologist for Home Harmonix, the world’s first free market gene-editing clinic. Some see the clinic as a beacon of hope; others, a tiding of evil things to come. Seth unwittingly becomes the face of Home Harmonix when he catches the attention of Stephen Versailles, a wildly popular internet video personality. Versailles’s political and professional connections threaten to broaden Seth’s horizons. And yet, even as Seth’s star rises, his world is quietly falling apart.
At home, his wife Ingrid’s identity crisis drives her into the clutches of a new cult-like online church, wherein her waxing disinterest in marriage and motherhood is nourished to sinister ends. As she systematically pushes Seth away from her, he falls ever more deeply in lust with a colleague, the brilliant yet unknowable geneticist, Dr. Maria Greenberg.
Earth’s climate might be changing. The planet might be dying. Cataclysm might be just around the next corner. And the unchecked growth of the human population might be the cause. Observing from the precipice, Seth might be uniquely positioned to help save humanity from itself. He’s just not sure how deeply he cares.
Where human gene-editing, new religions, and love collide: The Wrong Planet.
2022
ISBN 9798804029266
ALL THE DEAD COMEDIANS
Disgraced in the public eye for politically incorrect jokes (plus an on-stage nervous breakdown), comedian Oskar Nolan has been ordered by his therapist to take a vacation. His destination, chosen at random, is Jukai: an obscure and disastrously low-lying island with a morbid history.
Oskar plans to do nothing on Jukai other than drink in the sun and avoid anything that could be mistaken for healing. But his efforts are foiled by an alluring and enigmatic woman named Mira, who inflames his passions while spurning his desire for a deeper connection. Too bad for her that winning her heart is all Oskar has left to live for.
Mira’s myriad secrets will pull Oskar out of his downward spiral and into a whole new life full of travel, sex, and danger of global proportions—but not before he is arrested in California by the Joke Police for an old tweet he no longer remembers writing. . . .
All the Dead Comedians is the third book by G. S. Richter. Comical one moment, devastating the next, it is a genre-skirting take on death, love, and authoritarianism in our oh-so-problematic times.
2021
ISBN 9798537288695
IN FEAR OF PRAISE
Food. Alcohol. Pornography. The films of Aki Kaurismäki. These are Gordon’s addictions. He’s divorced, he’s depressed, and his dog is dead. (Of lesser concern, his career as a professor of film studies is coming to an end.) There isn’t much left of his life to ruin. That is, until the daughter he always knew he had—but never wanted to meet—comes mysteriously creeping into the picture.
Her name is Dresden, and her mother is dying. Gordon would rather not engage. But romantic embarrassments with Monica Barnes, a colleague in the Media Arts department at Copperhead College, amid an eruption of hysterical student activism, drive him to flee back East. Back to his homeland. Back to the scene of his only true crime: procreation.
Against all of his instincts, Gordon plunges into a noirish search for Dresden, through a seedy New England underbelly crawling with drug dealers, pimps, and dreamless destitution. Finding her means learning that she lives in squalor—and that she is raising a son, Reggie, all on her own. In the face of these revelations, Gordon must search himself for untapped reserves of responsibility and grace. Most of the damage is done, yet perhaps something can be salvaged from the wreckage. His whole life now boils down to a single question: Is he man enough to be a father?
Even if so, it may be too late.
In Fear of Praise is at once a profane tale of middle-aged dating, a scandalous send-up of modern campus politics, and an irreverent take on father-daughter relationships. Above all, it is a scathing investigation into the deepest, darkest heart of manhood itself.
2020
ISBN 979-8-652-67126-6
NIHIL'S RETINA
2018
ISBN 978-0-692-05259-4
"Earth is gone. I watched that great milky-blue iris wink out like the closing of a black-lidded eye."
After the obliteration of Earth by a manmade black hole, an astronaut and his android pilot hurtle through the solar system in a luxury model escape craft. They may well be all that is left. With no destination and nothing much to do, they engage in psychological warfare. The weapons at their disposal: philosophy, theoretical physics, and semantics.
While our human narrator (a glorified gardener) spends his time reliving the last days of his life before the cataclysm or losing at solitaire, his android companion Crowley puts on the appearance of trying to make him happy--all the while driving him out of his mind.
A darkly comic testimony of loss, madness, and conflicted cohabitation, Nihil's Retina runs the math on the value of life after the end of the world and comes up just shy of zero.
