On the surface EARTHWORM is a genre-blurring social satire of life in a comically absurd and economically collapsed post-Soviet dictatorship-a world of public doll burnings, a government campaign to suppress foreign music, a no-budget exploitation movie about medieval knights and modern gangsters... all the usual goings-on. The story revolves around two mismatched

earthquake survivors:

Turek, an amiable sucker falling through ever-widening economic cracks, loses one job after another but never loses faith in the Little Father who rules the country with tyrannical whimsy-and who is present mostly in the form of 40-foot bronze statues that gesticulate and recite his poetry. In desperation Turek takes a job his old friend Volad arranges for him at an isolated and secretive Seismic Institute in the restricted zone out in the desert. The catch: Turek has to report back to Volad on what's really going on out there.

Volad, a clown, a bon vivant, and a wheeler-dealer who used to be a punk rock star, now makes his living as a con artist. The failure of his latest hustle (endangered falcons) has put him at the mercy of mysterious people who seem very interested in that Seismic Institute. But Turek's panicky calls to report on the secret doings there-research into a device that might be connected to the imminent genocidal ethnic cleansing everyone keeps talking about (is teleportation involved?)-interrupt Volad at the most awkward times. A fatal misunderstanding forces the former punk rocker to make himself over into the apostle and poster child of sovereign music purification-an extended con on a national stage made even more complicated by the uncomfortable presence down Volad's pants of a secret subversive documentary.

So EARTHWORM is also a science-fiction mystery, and a spy thriller about incompetent spies, and an unlikely love story about a homely couple who never stop arguing, and a buddy comedy about a sad-sack loser and a shameless con artist, both just trying to get by in the free-for-all of post-Soviet life.