Margins
Black Brane book cover
Black Brane
2025
First Published
3.65
Average Rating
170
Number of Pages

Weird fiction icon and award-winning author Michael Cisco's Black Brane, begins with the physical pain of a bad foot and later voyages into absurdity, mad science, occultism, and existential dread. A man lying in a bed of pain flees from physical torment into his own memories, and into speculations about life and reality. He was, once, employed by the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes, a think tank pursuing research that ranges from occult studies to advanced physics, including black holes—or, as they are known in string theory, black branes. He meets and interacts with the various other members of the institute. Its founder, Dr. Marilyn Shitansky, a formerly homeless woman who claims to have a thinking hole in her brain; its resident occultist, the chain-smoking Daladara with his magic abacus; Ernie Allegre the engineer, who designed and built a decoherence reactor to power the institute; Dr. Liu, the string theorist; the linguist Dr. Corngholm, who can't sit still; and Dr. Shitansky's secretary, Renbrui, who seems to carry a mystery with her wherever she goes. In memory, the speaker finds them again, in a story of physical and emotional pain, of social and quantum entanglement, that turns comic, speculative, and nightmarish. Echoing the work of Blake Crouch and Thomas Ligotti, Michael Cisco shows in Black Brane why he’s beloved by weird fiction and horror readers.

Avg Rating
3.65
Number of Ratings
20
5 STARS
25%
4 STARS
30%
3 STARS
35%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
5%
goodreads

Author

Michael Cisco
Michael Cisco
Author · 19 books

Michael Cisco is an American weird fiction writer, Deleuzian academic and a teacher, currently living in New York City. He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999. He is interested in confusion.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved