Pluralistic: Mattie Lubchansky's 'Simplicity' (01 Aug 2025)


Today's links


The cover for the Pantheon cover of Mattie Lubchansky's 'Simplicity.'

Mattie Lubchansky's 'Simplicity' (permalink)

Cartoonist Mattie Lubchansky has a new, horny, weird, amazing science fiction graphic novel called Simplicity and it drops today:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/739012/simplicity-by-mattie-lubchansky/

Simplicity is set in the not-so-distant future, in which the US has dissolved and its major centers have been refashioned as "Administrative and Security Territories" – a fancy way of saying "walled corporate autocracies." Lucius Pasternak is an anthropology grad student in the NYC AST, a trans-man getting by as best as he can, minimizing how much he sells out, which is not enough to make his bosses treat him with respect, but is more than his friends can stomach.

Pasternak's fortunes improve when he gets a big, juicy assignment: to embed with a Catskills community of weirdo sex-hippies who supply the most coveted organic produce in the NYC AST. They've been cloistered in an old summer camp since the 1970s, and when civilization collapsed, it barely touched them. Pasternak's mission is to chronicle the community and its strange ways for a billionaire's vanity-project museum of New York State.

The meat of the action is set in Simplicity, the Catskills home of the Spiritual Association of Peers, where Pasternak struggles to gain the support and trust of the community, working their gardens by day and, eventually, attending their orgy/free-for-all nightly rituals, where the community members work out their tension and aggression through a mix of wild sex and punch-ups.

But no matter how diligently Pasternak tries to fit in, he still finds himself at the community's margins, unable to win over their trust. Then, just as he starts to make some progress, members of the community start going missing, turning up horribly mutilated. The horror of this is compounded by the erotic, nightmarish visions that have haunted Pasternak since his arrival in Simplicity, of a many-tentacled, many-mawed, many-vulvaed monster.

Pasternak's bosses abruptly recall him to the NYC AST, and that's when he learns the true nature of his mission to Simplicity, and the story moves into a thrilling, action-packed final act with an extremely satisfying conclusion.

This is such a tight little tale, speedily told in that way of the best graphic novels, which cram so much expressivity and atmosphere into the visual storytelling. It's got shades of Ellis's Transmetropolitan and Matt Bors's Justice Warriors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

This is post-cyberpunk, ecosexual revolutionary storytelling at its finest. I know Lubchansky mostly from her absolutely amazing podcast, No Gods, No Mayors (co-hosted with Trashfuture's November Kelly and Riley Quinn), where she is incredibly charming, funny, and incisive:

https://www.patreon.com/nogodsnomayors

If you'd asked me to imagine what kind of science fiction graphic novel she would turn out, I probably wouldn't have guessed this one – but now that I've read it, I'm not surprised at all that it came from her.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Anti-software-patent site taken down by software patent advocates https://web.archive.org/web/20051025080342/https://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=656

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#20yrsago German Harry Potter fan-translation in 45 hours https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/01/books.harrypotter

#10yrsago Re-recording the 1969 “Story and Song of the Haunted Mansion” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbJRoi92Ilo

#5yrsago Populism is good for your health https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/01/set-healthy-boundaries/#healthy-populism

#5yrsago The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/01/set-healthy-boundaries/#boundaries

#5yrsago A deep dive into Mexico's new copyright law https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/01/set-healthy-boundaries/#la-ley

#5yrsago Grace is going home https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/01/set-healthy-boundaries/#grace-freed

#1yrago Why is this Canadian university scared of you seeing its Privacy Impact Assessment? https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/01/eruditio-libertas-est/#streisand-v-linkletter

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • Canny Valley: A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

  • Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

  • Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

  • The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1011 words yesterday, 17402 words total).

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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