Works by
John Geiger
(Writer)

Dead Silence: The Greatest Mystery in Arctic Discovery  (1993)
On June 5, 1719, veteran Arctic explorer Captain James Knight set sail with two ships to look for the fabled Northwest Passage. Neither he nor his forty men were ever seen again. Three centuries later, Owen Beattie and John Geiger led a team of investigators to a desolate outcrop in Hudson Bay to uncover the truth of Knight’s disappearance. It took four arctic summers to gather the necessary evidence. This is the story both of a remarkable feat of archaeological detective work and of a group of brave men who died in the Arctic nearly three centuries ago. In the end, Knight’s story is one of intrigue and betrayal.

Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine (2003)
The true story of how the discovery of flicker potentials, and scientific observations about strange patterns, organized hallucinations, and even the displacement of time derived from stroboscopic light, very nearly resulted in a Dream Machine in every suburban living room. William S. Burroughs said: "Flicker administered under large dosage and repeated later could well lead to overflow of brain areas ... Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways." Aldous Huxley called it "an aid to visionary experience."

Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition (2000, revised 2004) with Owen Beattie
This new edition expands on the history of early British Arctic exploration and places the tragically fated Franklin expedition in the context of other expeditions of the era, including those commanded by George Back and James Clark Ross, which also suffered unaccountable and devastating losses. The authors' research reveals an unexpected - and ironic - cause for the mystery illness that befell the explorers. Never-before-seen photographs from the exhumations, updated research results, additional forensic corroboration, and a new introduction by Margaret Atwood complete this fascinating account.

Nothing Is True - Everything Is Permitted: The Life of Brion Gysin (2005) -- Finalist Lambda Literary Award for Biography
The multimedia artist, poet and novelist Brion Gysin may be the most influential cultural figure of the twentieth century that most people have never heard of.

Gysin (1916-1986) was an English-born, Canadian-raised, naturalized American of Swiss descent, who lived most of his life in Morocco and France. He went everywhere when the going was good. He dabbled with surrealism in Paris in the 1930s, lived in the "interzone" of Tangier in the 1950s and traveled the Algerian Sahara with Sheltering Sky author Paul Bowles before moving into the legendary Beat Hotel in Paris.

Working with the authorization of Gysin's literary executor, William S. Burroughs, John Geiger has produced the first-ever biography of the painter, poet, piper Brion Gysin.