Basilisk Files

A techno-fiction novel on neo-reactionary tendencies and the alt-right in India. Originally made popular by the blog posts of American software engineers Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug), Eliezer Yudkowsky, and the British philosopher Nick Land, neo-reactionism and the alt-right has over time spawned numerous origin stories, ranging from Japanese Otaku subcultures and Italian anarchist art to Indian mythology. In this novel by Indian artist Mochu, the operations of two far-right Indian publishing houses are interrupted by a series of alien abductions. In one incident a writer known for Christian-Messianic science fiction is attacked on a beach near the publishing house's main offices in Goa. To uncover these strange events a detective specializing in interstellar sociology is hired to investigate. Clues point to the involvement of an extra-terrestrial anarchist group with ties to Fourth International Posadist online forums. What unravels is a conspiracy to attack neo-reactionary outfits across the world. In another apparent incident, religious iconoclasm seems connected as well; effaced granite figurines in an ancient temple complex in central India have been "losing their faces" to animals in the nearby forest. Conspiracy theorists attribute the event to the influence of a cyberpunk anime twitter account that has corrupted an online Hindu iconoclasm propaganda website. Back in Goa, a Russian DJ teaches Eurasian political theory in the form of abstract noise music in local clubs. The abducted writer's book has also been conceptually infiltrated by the anarchist group; instead of the legendary mythical homeland for Hinduism in the Nordic region, what the trio of occult explorers in the story find instead is an infectious affect-Thing, which cause "radients of Hegelian unhappiness" in place of classical ressentiment. Pragmatic investigations of the detective eventually turn metaphysical, settling in on impossible solutions spanning the far reaches of outer space.