It's been a long road for her, but Corrie Walton is getting ready to publish her new feminist sci-fi magazine here in Southern California featuring fiction, poetry, art, photography, and all other forms of print media. I have the privilege of being a contributor to the first issue of this ambitious project, along with many other talented artists. I'm very excited about this zine. Here's a preview of what's to come from The Venusian:
KELSEY SHORT
Kelsey Short lives and works in Nowhere Place.
Her work has been included in many other rad zines/anthologies
including Drollhouse, Space Camp, and Three06. She is a virtuoso with
the brush pen, loves kitty cats, and kimchi. You should support these
habits by visiting her store, and keep track of her nowhereabouts on her blog.
ANN "A'MISA" CHIU
Ann “A’misa” Chiu is the editor of Eyeball Burp,
an eclectic ‘zine that almost matches her unrelentingly unique and
positive personality. Her personal art and blog site is called Colorish Dreams,
check it out to see more collage and drawings that remind me of Yayoi
Kusama’s work with a craftier edge and an extra dose of humor.
Also, The Venusian is still accepting submissions. If you're looking for somewhere to publish, I'd highly recommend giving this one a shot. Here's a link to the homepage and submission guidelines.
Information overload. Living in 2012, we
know what that’s like: smartphones, Facebook, news feeds, YouTube, and
Twitter all constantly compete for our attention. As overwhelming as
today’s technology-fueled society can be, Steven T. Bramble’s Grid City Overload
imagines a not-too-distant future where high-tech connections
completely dominate our lives. Welcome to Grid, CO. It’s 2025, a
time when subway advertisements adjust to a viewer’s gaze and LCD
ceiling tiles announce the news of the world in an endless stream.
Drawing on ideas set out by journalist Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book, Future Shock,
Bramble shows that the problem of “too much change in too short a
period of time” has only accelerated since Toffler first described
shell-shocked human beings trying to cope with rapid change. In
Bramble’s vision, people have come to depend upon technology to such an
extent that they are no longer able to connect on a human level.
Everyone is hooked up to their machines, but can’t access each other.
Indeed, each member of Bramble’s revolving cast of narrators lives
alone.
Bramble lets his characters tell the story, which is equal parts
fast-paced mystery and thoughtful, existential reflection. There’s
Gerney, an ambivalent, distracted drug addict; Fish, a factory worker
who has a text-only relationship with his girlfriend; and Amy,
cold-hearted hacker extraordinaire. Add another half-dozen voices to the
mix, including a sentient cell phone named Camillia, and you might
expect this story, at over four hundred pages in length, to get
confusing.
Bramble gives each character such a distinct perspective that it
takes no time at all to adjust to each in turn. Similarly, the long,
stream-of-consciousness sentences the author employs throughout could
easily get convoluted and tiring. But while he piles image upon image in
a clever reflection of the Grid city culture, the narrative continually
offers a new perspective, a gem of a thought worth capturing.
Why was the city of Grid created, and why do people continue to live
there? This is the bigger mystery that overshadows subplots of corporate
espionage and attempted assassinations. Bramble makes it clear that
escape is possible—the rest of the country is still out there, albeit
not in great shape. He makes effective use of metaphor to compare the
human experience in Grid to that of a beetle trapped between two panes
of glass: “The space is narrow, the beetle navigating it vertically …
crawling up and down in pathetically aimless directions in a definite
frenzy, his little legs and antennae working overtime with fear. He
stops, moves his head side to side like a dog sniffing out a trail
before exploding off in yet another doomed direction.”
Grid City Overload is in many ways the Bright Lights, Big
City of the current generation. Where Jay McInerney’s 1984 novel
featured cocaine addicts looking for their next big thrill and coming up
empty, Bramble’s story focuses on an entire society “oversaturated with
stimuli” and trying to glean some meaning from it all.
A story of near-future distress from author Bramble (Affliction Included, 2009).
The
futuristic town of Grid, Colo., is every bit as cold and
melancholy as the name would imply. Full of neon corporate logos,
industrial pollution and an unvaryingly unhappy population, Grid
encompasses all that people who fret about the future of American cities
are worried about. Within this maze of despair are a handful of
characters that range from a drug-addicted used car salesman who will
latch on to anyone resembling a father figure to a stunningly sexy, evil
computer expert who will latch on to anyone she can control. In
alternating narratives, the novel plumbs the lives of these characters
as they lose themselves in drugs and technological advances in an effort
to block out all the noise around them and find out who they really
are. This proves easier said than done. The people of Grid (and
presumably much of the world’s population circa 2025) are not just more
interested in looking at their electronic devices than the real world,
at times the gadgets assume a life of their own. In the book’s most
inventive section, one particularly lonely and paranoid character
manages to carry on a love affair with a cellphone. Other sections prove
far less inventive as again and again, people who were born human
become altered due to the constant barrage of devices and “sensory
overflow.” The average reader is likely to recognize a world where even
upscale, busy waiters feel the need to check their phones continually.
Whether they get their highs from drugs or political corruption, there
are not many characters to root for in Grid, so the reader is left
largely indifferent to their fates. Though spiced up with Pynchon-esque
flourishes, these tangents add only to the already-obvious message of
people drowning in technology.
A creative and repetitive analysis of our collective infatuation with glowing screens.
Here we go again - I'll be doing a book signing for GRID CITY OVERLOAD at Apostrophe Books in Long Beach on Sunday Aug. 26 from 11:30am-1:30pm. Stop by to say hi if you'd like, it'd be great to see some people I know. Also a great chance to check out another great independent book shop in the city.
APOSTROPHE BOOKS 4712 E 2nd St Long Beach, CA90803
[Thank you so much to everyone who attended the reading at Gatsby Books on Aug 14. Everything went well: I didn't have a panic attack, everyone got pretty drunk if not irrefutably drunk, and all kinds of books were purchased (some were even mine). Here's a photo recap of the night provided by Lindsey Ingram, a friend of mine who was nice enough to cover the event. Check her out on blogspot here - http://lindseying.blogspot.com/ - and enjoy the photos.]
Another store where copies of GRID CITY OVERLOAD can now be purchased: Downtown Darling. It's a salon and boutique run by Sandra Pimentel, and it's pretty badass. A great place to hang out, get your hair cut, buy clothes, get information, discuss Marxism, trade for goods and services, or ring in the New Year. Thank you to this business and Sandra for her support and contribution to Long Beach.
[I will be doing a reading and book release party (just to make it official) at Gatsby Books in Long Beach on Tuesday, Aug. 14 at 7pm. There will be a brief reading from the novel as well as cocktails, then afterwards we'll be going to Clancy's Bar on Broadway and Alamitos. It would be great to see you there! Also, if you already have a copy and I haven't signed it yet - bring it by! Come join us for a night of drinking and literature.]
[Copies of GRID CITY OVERLOAD are now available for purchase at some of Long Beach's best independent bookstores and coffeehouses. Here's a full list:]
GATSBY BOOKS their site 5535 E Spring St Long Beach, CA90808
FINGERPRINTS their site 420 E 4th St Long Beach, CA90802
{OPEN} BOOKS their site 2226 E 4th St Long Beach, CA90814
PORTFOLIO COFFEEHOUSE their site 2300 E 4th St Long Beach, CA90814
[These are all great places to hang out, browse, and try something new. If you're not from Long Beach and plan on visiting, these are definitely my top recommended spots. Thank you to all these businesses.]
GRID CITY OVERLOAD is officially available for purchase today. At the moment, the book is only available through my publisher at the link below, but in another five days it will be available through Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and many others. Give it a look, and happy reading!
THE VENUSIAN
