THE CIPHER

Kathe Koja

Aug 2014 · Roadswell Editions

About this ebook

Kathe Koja's classic, award-winning horror novel is finally available as an ebook.

Nicholas, a would-be poet, and Nakota, his feral lover, discover a strange hole in the storage room floor down the hall - "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." It begins with curiosity, a joke - the Funhole down the hall. But then the experiments begin. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says "We're not." But they're not in control, not from the first moment, as those experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.

THE CIPHER was the winner of the 1991 Bram Stoker Award, and was recently named one of io9.com's Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm. Long out-of-print and much sought-after, it is finally available as an ebook, with a new foreword by the author.


"An ethereal rollercoaster ride from start to finish." - The Detroit Free Press

"Combines intensely poetic language and lavish grotesqueries." - BoingBoing

"Kathe Koja is a poet ... [T]he kind that prefers to read in seedy bars instead of universities, but a poet." - The New York Review of Science Fiction

"Her 20-something characters are poverty-gagged 'artists' who exist in that demimonde of shitty jobs, squalid art galleries, and thrift stores; her settings are run-down studios, flat-beer bars, and dingy urban streets [a] long way from Castle Rock, Dunwich, or Stepford, that's for sure." - Too Much Horror Fiction

"This powerful first novel is as thought-provoking as it is horrifying." - Publishers Weekly

"Unforgettable ... [THE CIPHER] takes you into the lives of the dark dreamers that crawl on the underbelly of art and culture. Seldom has language been so visceral and so right." - Locus

"[THE CIPHER] is a book that makes you sit up, pay attention, and jettison your moldy preconceptions about the genre ... Utterly original ... [An} imaginative debut." - Fangoria

"Not so much about the vast and wonderful strangeness of the universe as it is about the horrific and glorious potential of the human spirit." - Short Form 

Ratings and reviews

I haven't quite finished it yet. This is just my opinion. There is something about this book that is so terrifyingly disturbing, so bizarre, and I'm used to reading novels like this. This is different. It crosses a line that only a handful of books have ever crossed for me. Insanity and claustrophobia are rampant on every page. Imagine staring down into the pitch dark blackness of a well. You may descend, but you know that something is down there. You'll go cause you can't resist. How this book is for me.

Maybe I was looking down the wrong rabbit hole with this one, but I found it dull and messy. It is hard to tell what is happening during pivitol parts and most of the book not much is happening at all. I'm all for a slow burn.... but the plot was lost in the crudeness of the story telling. This is one you will live or hate.

had to stop reading after 100 pages.the writing style is really weird. I do read this in about 20% of my usual reading speed and have to read pages again.strange sentence construction. its hard to get a grip. also its utterly boring. unsympathetic characters. you do not care what happens to them and the actual Handlung (sorry english has no fitting word for this. prrhaps action) can be summarized in 4 sentences. the suspense in this is about zero.

About the author

Kathe Koja's (underthepoppy.com) books include The Cipher, The Mercury Waltz, and Under the Poppy, which has been produced onstage and as a live immersive event. Her young adult novels include Buddha Boy, Talk, Kissing the Bee, and straydog. Her work has been published in eight languages, and honored by the ALA, the ASPCA, and with the Bram Stoker Award. She’s a Detroit native and lives in the area with her husband, artist Rick Lieder, and their cats.