CANR
WORK TITLE: WE CAN SAVE US ALL
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.adamnemett.com/
CITY: Charlottesville
STATE: VA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Princeton University, graduated; California College of the Arts, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. MIMA Music, Inc. (student organization), cofounder; History Factory, VA, writer and creative lead. Also, writer and director of films, including The Instrument.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to publications, including the New Yorker, Washington Post, Variety, Brooklyn Rail, and LA Weekly. Contributor to anthologies, including The Apocalypse Reader.
SIDELIGHTS
Adam Nemett is a writer based in Charlottesville, VA. He holds degrees from Princeton University and California College of the Arts. While still an undergraduate, Nemett helped to found a student organization called MIMA Music, Inc. That organization has grown over the years and is now in operation in dozens of countries across the globe. Nemett has served as a writer and creative lead at a company called the History Factory, which oversees the creation of nonfiction books for organizations and produces marketing campaigns. His work has also appeared in publications, including the New Yorker, Washington Post, Variety, Brooklyn Rail, and LA Weekly.
In 2018, Nemett released his first book, We Can Save Us All. This novel is set in the near future on the campus of Nemett’s alma mater, Princeton University. The planet is in a phase called Chronostrictesis, which means that climate change may soon lead to its demise. The novel’s protagonist is David Fuffman, who is in his first year at the school. David is studying engineering, though he is most passionate about comic books. He meets a classmate named Mathias Blue, a brilliant, rich kid with big ambitions. Mathis has a place away from campus that he calls The Egg. There, he brings together people to work on projects meant to change the world. Drugs, including a substance called Zeronal, provide energy and inspiration for solving these major problems. David works on a project called the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes and nurses a crush on a drug dealer named Haley. Meanwhile, Mathias becomes increasingly paranoid and controlling, creating turmoil among the other people at The Egg.
Critics offered favorable assessments of We Can Save Us All. Alexander Moran, reviewer in Booklist, commented: “There are numerous staggeringly imaginative set-pieces.” Moran concluded: “Nemett’s wondrously fresh novel positively bursts with charm, heart, and invention.” A Kirkus Reviews writer remarked: “While it never quite finds its balance between social satire and youth in rebellion, it’s still a confident, visceral debut that’s worth the ride.” The same writer described the book as “a timely fable of generational angst.” “Nemett’s refreshing and high-energy novel has the heart and moral tension of a superhero story and the growing pains of a bildungsroman,” suggested a contributor to Publishers Weekly. Katie Asher, critic on the Foreword Reviews website, asserted: “Adam Nemett’s We Can Save Us All is a humorous yet sobering pre-apocalyptic scenario. Realistic and smart, this is science fiction at its best.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 1, 2018, Alexander Moran, review of We Can Save Us All, p. 25.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2018, review of We Can Save Us All.
Publishers Weekly, September 3, 2018, review of We Can Save Us All, p. 72.
ONLINE
Adam Nemett website, https://www.adamnemett.com/ (November 8, 2018).
Foreword Reviews Online, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (November 3, 2018), Katie Asher, review of We Can Save Us All.
Adam Nemett is the author of WE CAN SAVE US ALL, a debut novel published by The Unnamed Press (November 2018). He serves as creative lead and author for The History Factory, where he's written award-winning nonfiction books for Lockheed Martin, Brooks Brothers, City of Hope Medical Center, and Huntington Bank, and directed campaigns for 21st Century Fox, Adobe Systems, HarperCollins, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, New Balance, Pfizer and Whirlpool. An excerpt of WE CAN SAVE US ALL was anthologized in The Apocalypse Reader.
Adam graduated from Princeton University and received his MFA from California College of the Arts. He is the writer/director of the feature film, The Instrument (2005), which LA Weekly described as, "damn near unclassifiable." At Princeton Nemett co-founded MIMA Music Inc., a student organization that grew into an educational 501(c)3 nonprofit that has operated in 40 countries worldwide. Adam's work has been published, reviewed and featured in Variety, LA Weekly, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Forbes.com, The Brooklyn Rail, Cville Niche, C-Ville Weekly and Cornel West's memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.
He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and two kids. Find him on Twitter (@NemoAuthor) or at www.AdamNemett.com
Adam Nemett
Author
Adam Nemett graduated from Princeton University and received his MFA in Fiction/Screenwriting from California College of the Arts. He serves as creative director and author for The History Factory, where he's written award-winning nonfiction books for Lockheed Martin, Brooks Brothers, City of Hope Medical Center, and Huntington Bank, and directed campaigns for 21st Century Fox, Adobe Systems, HarperCollins, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, New Balance, Pfizer and Whirlpool. An excerpt of his debut novel, WE CAN SAVE US ALL, was anthologized in The Apocalypse Reader.
He is the writer/director of the feature film, The Instrument (2005), which LA Weekly described as, "damn near unclassifiable." At Princeton Nemett co-founded MIMA Music Inc., a student organization that grew into an educational 501(c)3 nonprofit that has operated in 40 countries worldwide. Adam's work has been published, reviewed and featured in Variety, LA Weekly, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Forbes.com, The Brooklyn Rail, Cville Niche, C-Ville Weekly and Cornel West's memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.
He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and two kids.
ADAM NEMETT graduated from Princeton University and received his MFA in Fiction/Screenwriting from California College of the Arts. He serves as creative director and author for The History Factory, where he's written award-winning nonfiction books for Lockheed Martin, Brooks Brothers, City of Hope Medical Center, and Huntington Bank, and directed campaigns for 21st Century Fox, Adobe Systems, HarperCollins, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, New Balance, Pfizer and Whirlpool. An excerpt of his debut novel, WE CAN SAVE US ALL, was anthologized in The Apocalypse Reader.
He is the writer/director of the feature film, The Instrument (2005), which LA Weekly described as, "damn near unclassifiable." At Princeton Nemett co-founded MIMA Music Inc., a student organization that grew into an educational 501(c)3 nonprofit that has operated in 40 countries worldwide. Adam's work has been published, reviewed and featured in Variety, LA Weekly, The New Yorker, Washington Post, Forbes.com, The Brooklyn Rail, Cville Niche, C-Ville Weekly and Cornel West's memoir Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.
He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and two kids.
QUOTED: "There are numerous staggeringly imaginative set-pieces."
"Nemett's wondrously fresh novel positively bursts with charm, heart, and invention."
We Can Save Us All
Alexander Moran
Booklist. 115.3 (Oct. 1, 2018): p25.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* We Can Save Us All. By Adam Nemett. Nov. 2018.400p. Unnamed, paper, $18.99 (9781944700768).
Nemetts incredible debut follows David Fuffman, a comics-obsessed freshman at Princeton in 2021 who is indoctrinated into a small cadre of oddball students by Mathias Blue, an extremely wealthy student who funds projects designed to help others during the impending climate crisis. Along with the very real extreme snow and rain, Nemett's near future highlights what the realities of climate change could be, including the fringe theory, chronostrictesis, which suggests time is compressing and changing, and which is gaining traction. At their wonderfully weird home, The Egg, David and Mathias create a place for others to unlock their inner superhero--costumes, aliases, and all--to help combat the coming theoretical apocalypse. The novel switches between the perspectives of David, or Infrared, and his old high-school crush, Haley Roth, also at Princeton. As their group grows into a ridiculous cult, and it becomes unclear what is real, there are numerous staggeringly imaginative set-pieces involving a striking cast of characters. With a preapocalyptic setting like that of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story (2010) and soaked in hallucinogens in a way that recalls Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilsons Illuminatus! Trilogy, Nemett's wondrously fresh novel positively bursts with charm, heart, and invention.--Alexander Moran
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Moran, Alexander. "We Can Save Us All." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2018, p. 25. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A557837989/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=eda445b5. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A557837989
QUOTED: "While it never quite finds its balance between social satire and youth in rebellion, it's still a confident, visceral debut that's worth the ride."
"a timely fable of generational angst."
Nemett, Adam: WE CAN SAVE US ALL
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Nemett, Adam WE CAN SAVE US ALL Unnamed Press (Adult Fiction) $18.99 11, 13 ISBN: 978-1-944700-76-8
Hey, what if a book was like Fight Club (1996) but instead of fights, everyone takes a heroic dose of drugs and plays superhero?
This ambitious, half-cracked debut about Generation Z students struggling with a bent concept of the future in the midst of a slow apocalypse is an ambitious but acidic take on superhero stories and the price of growing up. Our nice-guy protagonist is David Fuffman, a struggling engineering student at Princeton University in a time of "Chronostrictesis," where time itself seems to be running out as climate change threatens the future of the human species. His life changes dramatically when he meets Mathias Blue, a charismatic, wealthy ne'er-do-well who has set up his lair, "The Egg," as a kind of off-campus, drug-fueled incubator for social change solutions. "At the Egg, you're always working on your project, your vision, your Thesis--something only you can do," says Mathias. David's Achilles' heel is Haley Roth, his punky high school drug dealer, on whom he has a brutal crush. Jacked up on a new stimulant called Zeronal laced with DMT, the residents of the Egg go through something of a psychic epiphany with visions of the future. David's thesis becomes the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes, a cartoonish attempt at forming a radicalized Justice League, with appropriately disastrous results summed up in a mock Atlantic article, "Dissent in the Age of Flibberflibbergaboobieism." The novel takes a dark turn in its final third, as secrets are revealed, rivalries erupt, and Mathias' dark visions of "The End" fuel a brainwashing from which no one in his orbit remains unscathed. Nemett's recipe for disaster is sound--a dash of Pynchon, a hint of Neal Stephenson, and a nihilistic undertone that belies a semihopeful denouement. While it never quite finds its balance between social satire and youth in rebellion, it's still a confident, visceral debut that's worth the ride.
A timely fable of generational angst armed with that old punk ethos: no future.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Nemett, Adam: WE CAN SAVE US ALL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A553948972/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d2a3171a. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A553948972
QUOTED: "Nemett's refreshing and high-energy novel has the heart and moral tension of a superhero story and the growing pains of a bildungsroman."
We Can Save Us All
Publishers Weekly. 265.36 (Sept. 3, 2018): p72.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
We Can Save Us All
Adam Nemett. Unnamed (PGW, dist), $18.99 trade paper (420p) ISBN 9784-944700-76-8
In Nemett's imaginative debut, a group of troubled Princeton students gather off campus in the neat future at the Egg, an off-campus research building named for its domelike shape. Thoreau-quoting and insecure in his masculinity, the wimpy David Fuffman is the most recent addition to the Egg, and he joins a handful of other boys who don't fit neatly into the Princeton ecosystem. They're led by Mathias Blue, an enigmatic rich kid who has shaped the Egg into both a safe haven for boys like David and something of a bunker for doomsday, which feels imminent. As blizzards, trade wars, and actual warfare ravage the world, the residents of the Egg adopt superhero personas in an attempt to do good (while on performance-enhancing drugs) by creating a 90-day "spectacle" of events meant to combat evil (mostly within themselves). As their collective, called the Unnamed Supersquadron of Vigilantes, grows more ambitious, both in their actions and in their public profile, they're joined by Haley Roth, David's high school drug dealer and current crush, with whom he shares an uneasy history. Fiery, funny, and fearless, Haley is the real standout of the novel--especially compared to the mopey David--and readers will wish she'd been given narrative precedence and a less cliched backstory. Still, Nemett's refreshing and high-energy novel has the heart and moral tension of a superhero story and the growing pains of a bildungs-roman. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"We Can Save Us All." Publishers Weekly, 3 Sept. 2018, p. 72. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A554250972/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1201204d. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A554250972
QUOTED: "Adam Nemett’s We Can Save Us All is a humorous yet sobering pre-apocalyptic scenario. Realistic and smart, this is science fiction at its best."
We Can Save Us All
Adam Nemett
The Unnamed Press (Nov 13, 2018)
Softcover $18.99 (390pp)
978-1-944700-76-8
Adam Nemett’s We Can Save Us All is a humorous yet sobering pre-apocalyptic scenario. Realistic and smart, this is science fiction at its best.
The world seems to be ending, but David, with a group of intelligent, driven Princeton dropouts, is determined to save it. Normal things, like student loans, grades, and classmates’ opinions, cease to hold much weight in 2021. Time is fading; clocks are no longer accurate, and the weather is getting more and more dangerous. Mathias, a prophetic figure also known as Ultraviolet, predicts that June sixth will be the end; David and his group prepare to survive past the date.
Flashbacks into David’s childhood and early years at Princeton follow his growth from an ordinary, nerdy guy into The BusinessMan, the underground chief of a group whose members think of themselves as superheroes. Publicly, Mathias is their figurehead, but David is doing the work behind the scenes. Each member of the group has an alias, costume, and thesis that they spend their waking hours developing. Creative? That’s an understatement.
The book’s dialogue is abnormally poetic. Mathias speaks with calculated purpose, adding to the romanticism of a pre-apocalyptic world, where abandon and carelessness run rampant. Foreshadowing, whether it is purposefully obvious or more subtle, is used to hint at the future of the group and the world as a whole. Drugs, from Zemoral to DMT, are used frequently and without caution, blurring the line between reality and intoxication.
With just the right amount of ridiculousness, We Can Save Us All is a futuristic superhero tale where the heroes are passionate, intelligent Princeton students fighting to save the world.
Reviewed by Katie Asher
November/December 2018