The Architect [hc]

The mad and mystical Körn Society, based in Ticino, Switzerland, sets itself the task of building a grand, soul-uplifting Meeting Place for its members. An inspired architect, a visionary in stone, must be found, and one such is available: the mysterious and unpredictable Alexius Nachtman. But is he perhaps too visionary? This is the effect of his book of sketches: "Huge edifices, megastructures, poured from the leaves. Bridges which spanned oceans, towers which stretched into the clouds, huge fortresses which looked as if they could withstand the destructive force of an Armageddon. Vertical cities rose up from desert plains in startling anaxometrics, while spatial cities, cities built fifteen or twenty meters above their counterparts, stood forth as visions of utopian architecture, only to be outdone on subsequent pages by floating cities, vast nests of hexagonal pods resting atop lakes and oceans. Structures which straddled the earth and others which burrowed under it. Buildings which brought to mind lost civilizations or seemed to be the habitations of beings from another world . . . " Despite doubts, he is hired. And so, in this adventure of marble and mortar, of machines and workmen, of cult and manipulation, the most bizarre construction project since Babel commences its Cyclopean growth. Written by a contemporary master of the decadent and grotesque, The Architect is like Greek tragedy on hallucinogens--a brilliant, stylish short novel of eccentricity and decay.