Discomania [Jennifer Gibbons]

[Murder] [Dance] [Floor]

Discomania

Jennifer Gibbons

Strange Attractor Press, UK. 2026. New, hardcover in an edition of 300. Includes 2 badges, a risographed print, and a bookplate. 

From the publisher:

The place was full of swarming, pugnacious, dangerous missellneous reptile’s… Teenager’s everywhere pounded their way on top of each other crazily strangling, biting and slashing each other’s with broken glass, smashed records or sharpened blades…

16-year-old Jennifer Gibbons (1963–1993) wrote Discomania in 1980, alongside her twin sister June-Alison, who was writing her own novel, The Pepsi-Cola Addict (published by SAP in 2023), in the bedroom that they shared.

Jennifer offered Discomania to the same English vanity press who would publish June-Alison’s book, but Discomania was turned down for being “too violent, too sexual, and
too futuristic.”

It's great to see this out in the world following the success of The Pepsi Cola Addict. Just as strange of a book, Discomania predicts the Ballardian fall of the UK into decadence and moral psychosis as exacerbated by the Thatcher regime. Lovingly assembled, and featuring an afterword by David Tibet and Ania Goszczyńska.

Not easily found in the US!