Public Access Afterworld

Jane Schoenbrun

'Jane Schoenbrun has the literary voice I've been famished for. Public Access Afterworld gave me a vertiginous thrill I haven't encountered since David Mitchell... you read it and the world glints with secrets anew' Torrey Peters, author of Stag Dance and Detransition, Baby

At 5:35pm on 3rd September 1988, Dallas weatherman Ray "CanYouSay Sunshine" Davino makes passing reference to 'Public Access Afterworld' during a rambling monologue, right before committing a shocking act of violence.

On 12th June 2009, David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin's basement to watch TV's analog-to-digital transition. But in the static that follows, Erin witnesses surreal broadcasts from a pirate TV network called 'Public Access Afterworld' - and their lives are changed forever.

Fourteen years later, Bethany Peters toils through the night shift at megacorp GlobalVill's bleak Austin campus. A trans content moderator, she spends her evenings reviewing an endless stream of horrific videos. But then a young streamer begins to crop up in her feed calling out to 'PublicAccessAfterworld'.

But what is Public Access Afterworld?

A literary epic with a playful take on speculative fiction, Public Access Afterworld will have you reading through the night and rooting for its characters to survive. Spanning decades and realities, and featuring an unforgettable ensemble of outcasts and nerds, it will drag you from rural Texas to the heart of American darkness in 1940s Los Alamos - all the way to a world at the edges of reality itself.