The long wait is finally over. This week Forecast: Nozone X hits stores just in time for the last few weeks of summer reading. How long a wait? Four years, to be precise. Said by Wired to be "a perfect palate cleanser for a night of Fox News," Nozone skewers, gaffes, garrotes and otherwise thwacks conventional thought in ways that will have Johathan Swift spinning in his grave.

The invention of Nicholas Blechman, the art director of The New York Times Book Review, who also illustrates under the pen name Knickerbocker, Nozone has evolved from the hand-collated and stapled 'zine he self-published in 1990 during his senior year at Oberlin College to the crisply printed and perfect-bound soft-cover book now published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Cover and Future Homeless spread by Knickerbocker; future corporate identities by Thomas Fuchs & Felix Sockwell, all courtesy Princeton Architectural Press.

As the son of illustrator R.O. Blechman, Nicholas grew up knowing some of the world's best illustrators and cartoonists. From Nozone's first incarnation, its pages have been charged into life with ideas and images by such artists as Gary Panter, Joost Swart, Jonathon Rosen, and David Sandlin, to name a few.

Like its immediate predecessor, Empire, Forecast, is an absorbing, rebellious, rambunctious response in art and thought to the many disasters that man has wrought. "Never before has looking into the future been so complicated or so traumatic," the introduction begins. "NASA," it continues, "uses some of the world's most powerful computers to predict the future; Nozone uses some of the world's greatest imaginations to bring it to life."

Among the highlights of the issue are news clippings from The New York Times about climate change. One of these, dating from June 23, 1890, reports on the failure of the Hudson River ice crop that year and local reliance on ice for refrigeration being shipped in from Norway.

A revisionist retelling of the apocalyptic Tale of Chicken Licken by John Fulbrook III and Timothy Goodman, with illustrations by Mark Stutzman and text adapted by Denise Fulbrook, warns us to beware of foxy politicians.

In More Weird Weather Coming Your Way, Jesse Gordon and Will Van Roden predict, "Muggy. Slimy. Thick fog, mostly toxic arriving by evening. Visibility: 3 inches. Breathability: Nil."

While these examples may invoke the dread of a drowning man grabbing onto a razor blade to escape death's clutches, there is also lightness and fun to be had. Consider the Borscht Belt style of R.O. Blechman's version of the ancient tale of Cassandra, the Trojan soothsayer who became oh-so-unpopular for her gloom-and-doom predictions. She splits to a faraway isle where her prophesies go unheard. When Athens invades her hometown, Cassie's fellow citizens scratch their heads in disbelief, saying, "Where was she when we needed her?"

Forecast, Nozone X, was edited by Nicholas Blechman; cover by Knickerbocker; endpapers by Christoph Niemann; designed by Knickerbocker Design and the Office of Joon Mo Kang; and forecasting by Elizabeth Amon, Guy Billout, Barry Blitt, Seymour Chwast, Erik T. Johnson, Maira Kalman, Peter Kuper, Brian Rea, Paul Sahre, and Henning Wagenbreth among many others.