10 A BOOT STOMPING 20 A HUMAN FACE 30 GOTO 10

Sometimes called simply A Boot Stomping a Human Face Forever. A non-winning entry in 2009's 3-Day Novel contest, picked up by Australian publisher Legume Man Books and released in April 2010. Jess Gulbranson's second trope-conscious novel.

The name comes from the computer programming language BASIC, in which it originally required each line to start with a number. The term "GOTO 10" will go back to the line starting with the number 10, which, since there is no way to break out of the loop, would continue forever. It quotes George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Short and sweet, the story concerns a music-fixated young man's discovery of a bizarre gift/curse, and his involvement with the parties that would like to exploit it. Buy it here.


 * Alien Geometries:
 * Brown Note: The Jordanian glyph.
 * Determinator: Jones.
 * Crazy Cultural Comparison: Jethro Tull on a desert island?
 * Deadpan Snarker: Eric, Osborn, and Fargo.
 * Disability Superpower: Anna and her friends. By the end of the book could be considered a case of Blessed with Suck.
 * Faster-Than-Light Travel:
 * Formulaic Magic:
 * Fridge Brilliance: IT sophisticates generally claim that exposure to BASIC causes irreversible brain damage... yep, even the title of this work is a Brown Note.
 * Ghostly Goals: Averted.
 * Headphones Equal Isolation: Eric
 * Historical Domain Character: Several, or at least their ghosts:
 * Intrigued by Humanity: Just not all of it.
 * Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Osborn. Stated in the afterword to be an Author Avatar.
 * Kill'Em All: Sometimes more than once. Word of God has it that despite- or perversely because of this, there will be a sequel.
 * Literary Allusion Title: From Nineteen Eighty-Four.
 * Necromancer:
 * Pretty Little Headshots: Averted.
 * Psychic Nosebleed: Using necromancy in a way that defies logic results in psychic diarrhea.
 * Stuff Blowing Up:
 * What Measure Is a Mook?: "The only reason I'm alive is because you're not a murderer. Unless you count the driver and all those guards..."