Neptune Frost is an extraordinarily dense audiovisual experience, full of quick but oftentimes global transformations. The formal experimentation nevertheless holds the viewer, sustaining a paradoxical continuity despite incessant change; as Steven Shaviro convincingly argues, “there are no meta-levels at all.” This paradoxical situation means that the film can both maintain a vibe and leave the viewer feeling like they need a guide. This book is the perfect answer: Shaviro's minute-by-minute engagement keeps the reader immanent to the flow of events; his eye for detail, punctuated by interpretive and philosophical asides, respects the vibe while gently guiding us to greater understanding.

Shane Denson, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University, USA

Steven Shaviro's close textual reading of the groundbreaking film Neptune Frost is a tour-de-force, scene-by-scene exegesis of Saul Williams's and Anisia Uzeyman's Afrofuturist masterpiece. Moving beyond conventional film criticism, Shaviro offers a precise and deeply engaging reading of the film's revolutionary politics and its kaleidoscopic visual and sonic poetry. Ideal for scholars and students alike, this book is a masterclass of one of the most significant speculative texts of the 21st century.

Stefanie K. Dunning, Susan B. Anthony Professor of Sexuality, Women, and Gender Studies, Director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute, and Professor of Black Studies and English, University of Rochester, USA

In this unique companion guide, Steven Shaviro unravels and reweaves the complex fabrics and landscapes within Neptune Frost's alternate world. Each event and gesture becomes a nested time–sound–image portal for his commentary, looping outward and back in refrains that reveal a planet-wide mesh of contexts and implications. From the geopolitics of coltan mining to the film's distinctive production history and aesthetic of accretion and connection, Shaviro approaches the film as braids and sheaves of polyglossic, imbricated interactions. His text co-creates, with the film, a structure of feeling that re-sounds and celebrates the multidimensional political resolve embedded in every frame.

Ed Keller