Set in a bleak, near future Paris, Empire of the Senseless sees Kathy Acker venture into science-fiction. Telling the story of a cyborg named Abhor and her pirate lover, Thivai, as they embark upon a violent and sexually explicit odyssey encountering prostitutes, terrorists and mad doctors in a world in which ‘society lays dying amid its own ruins’. Acker uses William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as sources for appropriation, presenting a brilliantly twisted tale in her characteristically fragmented and convention-defying prose that feels entirely original.