Beta Testing the Apocalypse #[nn]

Tom Kaczynski's Beta Testing the Apocalypse arrives from Fantagraphics in 2012 as a striking collection, its cover a dense, sun-drenched cityscape rendered in vivid oranges and yellows where lab-coated figures wander rooftops with clipboards and measuring tools, coolly surveying a metropolis that includes an FBI building, a crumbling skyscraper, a pink tentacled creature, and a miniature neighborhood perched improbably atop a high-rise. The panoramic view suggests something between urban planning and end-times inspection — science applied to sprawl on the grandest, most unsettling scale. If the title story "100,000 Miles…" is any indication, Kaczynski's work rewards readers who like their architectural unease served with genuine wit.