Mark von Schlegell

Mark von Schlegell (1967) is american/irish since fiction author and experimental art writer based in Cologne (Germany) and L.A. He began his career in the 90s as a critic and “contemporary writer,” publishing widely in the new york and los angeles art scenes. His alternate occupation in speculative fiction had been occurring in sideways relation to his life since childhood. This is immediately obvious in his sf, which is dogged and esoteric, psychedelic and intellectual, a wry mix of stupid fantasy and peculiar insight. Although they’re clearly influenced by the awe and slime of pulp paperbacks, his novels are the kind of books that get published by MIT and the anarchist philosophy press Semiotext(e). Von Schlegell’s activist literary theory, published by Merve Verlag Berlin in the books _Realometer_ and _Dreaming the Mainstream_, fictionalizes the very discourse of literary theory at the expense of philosophy, received history and other transatlantic delusions of the Enlightenment — bringing into focus a peculiar sort of activist modern novel in the process.