« Google buys YouTube | Main | You don't wanna be normal » Signs of Witness John Shirley, who with Bruce Sterling was an architect of the cyberpunk literary subgenre in the 1980s, is writing a new kind of apocalyptic novel. As right-wing "end of days" novels proliferate, John's writing "unapologetically" from the other end of the partisan scale, hence his novel's name, The Other End. It strikes me that if the landlord of this property we call Earth returns and discovers how we've treated it, and how many of the better tenants have been treated, then he--or she or something beyond gender--may indeed wish to do some evicting and rebuilding. But a mythology cooked up in a narrow backwater of the world is unlikely to provide the blueprint for that Day of Judgment. Hence, alternative End Times tales are called for, for the sake of balanced viewpoint, at least, and--not least--in the hope of the beginning of a paradigm shift. This novel offers that alternative judgment day. While writing the novel, John's developed another project, a web site called Signs of Witness, which "offers an equal opportunity for wry comment, entertainment, skepticism, and passionate belief in the forthcoming transfiguration of the world." A kind of apocalyptic Fortean Times, the Signs site is similarly addictive, filled with accounts of asteroid threats, elephant rebellions, prophecy, environmental degradation, and global destruction. You know... .fun. jon posted this at 9:24 AM |
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