Million-Year Centipede, The

by Eckhard Gerdes
  • $11.95 Paperback
    ISBN: Million-Year Centipede - Paperback

    US only, email
    for international rates


Wakelin, frontman of seminal rock group The Hinge, once wrote a poem so prophetic that to ignore its wisdom is to doom yourself to drown in blood. After realizing the power of his words he faked his own death. Now one obsessed fan is tracking Wakelin down…can he be found before it’s too late?

What They’re Saying AboutThe Million-Year Centipede

“Built of fragments of memory, drawings, text, and songs, the novel raises more questions about hero-worship, the apocalypse, and rock music than it provides answers, forming an altogether postmodern parody of American culture…The Million Year Centipede is a delightfully modern, wonderfully original read. Two thumbs up!”
—Midwest Book Review

“Amazing, inventive, risky and highly entertaining.”
—Howard Kaylan, member of The Turtles and The Mothers of Invention

“Avant pop writer Eckhard Gerdes returns to the source of darkside rock’n’roll dreams with his latest novel The Million-Year Centipede, a multi-layered take on the prophetic impact of one of the most enigmatic songs by The Doors. ‘The Celebration of the Lizard’ was written by Doors frontman Jim Morrison as a kind of ritual invocation and though performed at mass raves it was only ever imperfectly recorded as an album track. What was being invoked though? This is the question which Gerdes addresses in a playful postmodern allegory which focuses on the apocalyptic return of a rock’n’roll messiah named Wakelin. Did he fake his own death? Is he expected to collect his true fans and rendezvous with a spaceship due to land any moment? Is he responsible for the bloody deaths of the thousands who refuse to believe in him? And what is the malign significance of the centipede god? The questions multiply, but Gerdes is too canny to offer definitive answers. Instead, he spins out memory shards, text fragments, condensed poems, and even drawings. There are influences drawn from postmodernist writers like John Barth as well as sci-fi writers like Michael Moorcock. Lurking at the back of this novel, though, is a howling spirit of revenge for the betrayed dreams of the 1960s. Gerdes has a poetic sensibility which takes no prisoners.”
—Steve Beard, author of Meat Puppet Cabaret and Digital Leatherette