Akiba: A Gnostic Novel

In the 1980s, p.m.'s book bolo bolo became an indispensable guide to new autonomous projects, a manual for applied utopias on a human scale, stressing cultural diversity, freedom of movement, ecological sustainability, and a relaxed attitude towards work themes which remain essential in his new novel, Akiba. When a tiny detail on a coin disappears for a moment, Marco Vilini, a Swiss insurance-fraud investigator, enters a crisis of subjectivity, and the dull despair of civilized life in Zürich is countered by the neo-Gnostic philosophies of an urban eco-community called Akiba. Seduced by the reasoning and logic of the community, and convinced of the virtual nature of all experience, Marco and his companion soon make a mortal leap out of this world, arriving in a meta-universe called Limboland. After a timeless exploration of this infinite paradise, they return to Earth with a renewed capacity to bring about utopia here and now. Akiba combines the age-old schemes of millennial and modern utopias with recent research in ecology, quantum physics and computing, the mathematics of the Big Bang, Peak Oil theories, and the work of Roger Penrose, J. R. Searle, and others.