Stories that don’t play it safe.
Fiction, visual projects, and unidentified narrative objects.
For worlds slightly off-track and people who prefer the risk to the purr.
First casualty: Sayonara Suckers, a darkly funny, satirical and furiously contemporary dystopian novel.
SAYONARA SUCKERS
THE FUTURE WAS A BAD IDEA
FANTE'S
LOS ANGELES
THE LAST DAN FANTE
ESSENTIAL STUDIES
Serious answers to questions that don’t always deserve them.
SAYONARA SUCKERS
FUTURE WAS A BAD IDEA
A dark comedy where everyone is convinced they’re right, the timing is disastrous,
and the future does whatever it wants.
Max, Daniel and Karl become convinced that the future has already been hijacked. Not by machines, but by the people building them.Their solution is as absurd as it is radical: go back in time and kidnap the child versions of tomorrow’s most powerful (tech) figures.What starts as a ridiculous plan turns into a chaotic road trip through paranoia, moral doubt, and unintended consequences.
Where saving the world and becoming its next threat begin to look dangerously similar (kind of).
SAYONARA SUCKERS
This is where things start to go wrong.⇣
"You really think that’s a good idea, bro?""No," said Max. "But it’s the only one we’ve got."Karl stared at him for a moment, then slowly tilted his head to the side — a movement that,
combined with his soggy mop of hair, gave him the look of a beaten dog."That’s really reassuring," he said.
"The only plan we have... is actually a bad plan?""Exactly.""Okay, cool."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rem Sora comes from a background in visual arts, writing, and film.
His work explores narratives that sit somewhere between satire and visual fiction, often balancing tension, absurdity, and a sense of controlled drift.With Sayonara Suckers, he moves into long-form storytelling, following three misfits convinced that the future has already been hijacked, and that the only way to fix it is to go back and kidnap it before it happens.The novel blends dark humor, unease, and a deliberately unstable sense of direction, where bad ideas are often the only ones available.Sayonara Suckers is his first novel.
FANTE'S LOS ANGELES
Fante’s Los Angeles is a long-term book project blending photography, unpublished material, literary fragments, and personal tributes around the Fante legacy.Originally developed with Dan Fante, the project explores Los Angeles not as a postcard, but as a haunted, sunburned landscape, full of alleys, motels, bars, ghosts, and unfinished sentences.
The book is currently in development as an independent publishing project.With unpublished tribute texts: Ayrin Fante, Giovanni Fante, Michael Connelly, Mark Safranko, Tony O'Neill, Jerry Stahl, Ben Myers, Douglas Mallon, Kevin Ring, Amy Baker, Eric Vieljeux, Olivier Martinelli...
Coming soon via a Kickstarter campaign (English edition).
To follow the project's progress
⇣
ESSENTIAL STUDIES
Serious answers to questions that don’t always deserve them.Power, money, ego, intelligence, technology, happiness, success… Essential Studies methodically examines the great obsessions of our time, using science, charts, questionable reasoning, and occasionally disturbing conclusions.First subject of study: Does Power Make You Dumb? (unfortunately, we had to start somewhere).
DOES POWER MAKE YOU DUMB?
THE STUDY NO ONE ASKED FOR
... Short answer: Yes.But out of respect for the scientific method, potential readers, and the book itself,
Rem Sora decided to elaborate.Why do leaders eventually stop listening to anyone? Does money reduce empathy?
Does success alter the brain? Do billionaires still live on the same planet as the rest of us?
Do social networks really promote collective intelligence? (Spoiler: No.)Drawing on rigorously selected observations, more-or-less scientific studies (mostly less), unnecessarily precise charts, and several human subjects who would have preferred to remain anonymous,
Rem Sora investigates the side effects of power, money, and influence.A groundbreaking behavioral study that questionably dissects:- the many varieties of power and stupidity.
- the gradual decline of listening skills among so-called “important people.”
- the uncontrolled expansion of the ego.
- narcissistic incidents associated with extreme wealth.
- gurus, influencers, prophets — no one gets out alive.
- the mysterious disappearance of common sense in highly hierarchical environments.A book for anyone who works for someone, manages someone,
or suspects they may already be part of the problem.A satirical, meticulously documented, and perfectly useless guide to acquiring power.
MONO
TINY, CUTE, EXCITED
MONO
Soon...
THE MAX DIARIES
#001
You can't save the world with batteries
#002
There are signs. Always the same ones.
#003
The Genius Who Ruined Everything - Elegantly
You can't save the world with batteries, bro
— The Max Diaries
I’ll keep it simple.
This is probably not a great idea.Not the worst one I’ve ever had. Daniel still has scars from the East Lansing pool incident but yeah… it’s up there.At some point, you look around.
Not in a philosophical way. Not like “the world is complex.”
No.
You just… look.
And what do you see?Necks.Everywhere.
People bent over glowing rectangles.
They eat with them. Walk with them. Live with them.
They don’t look at anything anymore.
Or anyone.And then the question hits you.
Simple. Logical.Who did this?
Not “why.” Not “in what socio-economic context.”
No.
Who. Did. This.Because at some point, somewhere, some guy had an idea.
Something that was supposed to “connect people.”
Make life easier.
Bring us closer.That kind of bullshit we all bought into.Result: global addiction. Disguised as progress.Great.And then - February 6, 2018.
(Falcon Heavy first launch 2018)
A guy sends a car into space.A Tesla. Red.
With a mannequin inside.
For no reason.Just for the picture. The ego.
I looked at it.
Not for long. It pissed me off.Yeah, it’s a beautiful image.
But it says everything.A man so rich nobody ever tells him “no.”
One morning he wakes up and decides to shoot a car into orbit.
Because he can.
Because no one’s there to say: “Stop. This, Stupid!”That’s when I started thinking about kids.Relax. Nothing weird.
I mean before.Before things go off the rails.
Before the kid decides he’s above everything.
Before money and power build that little god complex in his head.The idea came like that.
Not all at once.
Slowly.The car in space.
Smartphone zombies.
Engineers who won’t let their own kids use what they build.
Private jets flying people to climate summits.
Progress starting to feel like a bad joke.At some point Daniel looked at me and said: “You’re thinking about something illegal, aren’t you?”I said: “Yeah.”He thought about it.
Two seconds.
Then nothing.I didn’t push it.But the question is still there.Is kidnapping an eight-year-old kid a good idea?No.
Of course not. I’m not insane.It’s illegal.
Morally questionable.
Logistically complicated.For example:
- A Chrysler LeBaron trunk isn’t that big
- A kid screaming at 3 AM carries pretty farI know all that.But I also know something else.
Nothing changes if you just sit there.
History has never been written by people who said “we’ll see later.”Daniel disagrees.
He disagrees with everything, actually.
That’s why he’s my best friend.Anyway.What do we have?- A broom closet.
- A flip phone.
- And a list of names.The rest…
That’s just logistics. Right?
Read Sayonara Suckers
(before someone decides for you)
Is kidnapping an 8-year-old a questionable idea?
— The Max Diaries
People think it starts with a genius.A prodigy.
A future Steve. A future Mark.
Someone who will “change the world.”That’s not true.It starts much earlier.It starts in a schoolyard.A kid who doesn’t play with others.
Another one who watches everything. Learns too fast.
A third one who tests. Boundaries. People.No one worries.They say he’s “different.”
They say he’s “gifted.”No.He’s on a trajectory.The problem isn’t intelligence.
The problem is what you do with it.And what people let you get away with.We celebrate the outcomes.
We ignore the rest.The contempt.
The need for control.
The quiet pleasure of manipulation.It doesn’t disappear.It grows.One day, it becomes a company.
A network. A system.Something so big
no one can stop it anymore.Then we write books.
We make movies.
We say “we should have known.”I prefer to act earlier.
Read Sayonara Suckers
(before they tell you what to read)
The Genius Who Ruined Everything - Elegantly
— The Max Diaries
I’m going to be totally honest with you.I liked Steve.That’s the trouble with geniuses. They’re likable. At first.
Charismatic.
They wear black turtlenecks and talk about changing the world with the eyes of a true believer. We stare in wide-eyed wonder, but all the while, behind your back, they’re building something that will colonize your brains, your nights, your family dinners, and your last conversations worthy of the name.The iPhone. 2007.Steve walks onto a stage and announces that he’s holding a phone in his hand.
An iPod and an internet device.
The crowd applauds as if Jesus had just risen from the dead wearing loafers. At that moment, nobody thinks: Wait, we might be witnessing something irreversible here.
It wasn’t a phone he was holding. Clever guy.
It was a leash.
A pretty leash, with a nice backlit screen, rounded corners, and an interface so intuitive that even your grandma ends up getting lost in it at 2 a.m., watching cat videos.What Jab invented wasn’t a tool. It was an extension of the nervous system—one you could turn off.
But never do.
What Jab manufactured was addiction—complete with a two-year warranty and a loyalty program.
And the worst part? He knew it.
People on his own team said as much: they didn’t let their kids use these devices.Steve and I had a conversation once, in a warehouse in Michigan, back around 1985.
He was calm. Too calm. Even then, he had that unblinking stare. Even then, he had that way of giving an answer that dodged the point, as if your question were too small for him. He offered me an apple.
I should have seen it coming.
I stepped outside. I closed the shed door behind me.He didn't even cry.
Read Sayonara Suckers
(before they tell you what to read)
CONTACT
ABOUT US
Hello Bandits started from a simple observation.
There are stories, projects, and editorial objects that don’t find their place.Not because they’re bad, but because they don’t fit the mold.
Because they’re too hybrid, too free, too difficult to categorize.
Or simply because they don’t come through the right doors.Hello Bandits wasn’t created to publish a lot (even if we’d like to).
The problem is, we’re realistic.We’re not tied to a schedule, a release rhythm, or a catalog strategy.
Which suits us just fine. For now.The idea is somewhere else.To create a space for developing and publishing singular projects, books, narrative objects that exist for good reasons, even when those reasons aren’t obvious.Projects that take their time, because creation doesn’t work well with immediacy.They may sometimes be imperfect, but they are intentional because they’d rather exist as they are than be polished until they disappear.Hello Bandits is an independent, lightweight, deliberately limited structure.
Not a production machine, but more of a passage point.A place where certain projects can exist without having to become something else.For now, Hello Bandits begins with Sayonara Suckers.More may follow. Or not.We’ll see.
