ZQ-287 PRESENTS: KILLING THE FUTURE

ZQ-287 PRESENTS:

KILLING THE FUTURE
A Fiction Reading and Discussion on How to Make Sure There’s No Future Forever

Sep. 7

*featuring*

AFFLICTION INCLUDED (AUTHOR’S CUT) by Steven T. Bramble
After spending his youth as the son of a dissident mother who tried and failed to plot the overthrow of the consolidated world government, Stanly Borque was punished for political crimes he didn’t commit. Now, years, later, he’s none other than a compliant corporate employee, working in the midst of the same authoritarian, oligarchical system of total social surveillance his mother had hoped to eradicate. Which doesn’t actually bother him too much—until a business trip to Ghana where a bizarre accident catapults him back into the world of the powerful, and the inescapable arms of the regime.

As an inept participant in so much conspiracy, he’ll be confronted with a barrage of possibly important questions along the way. Like, is freedom a dead concept? Why did a global pandemic of suicides cause a tenth of the world’s population to do itself in? And, is there a reason to hope anymore? A story of the world in the total opposite of disarray, and what it means when reality is at odds with the human spirit.

Steven T. Bramble is the author of the Psychology of Technology Triptych, which includes the novels GRID CITY OVERLOAD, for which he won Honorable Mention in Foreword Review’s 2012 Book of the Year Award, and DISPOSABLE THOUGHT, which was awarded an editor’s pick by Kirkus Reviews. 

“Bramble’s work evokes that of many 20th-century authors who sought to grapple with their eras’ technological tumult. His post-modern maximalism calls to mind Thomas Pynchon and William T. Vollmann; his grim dystopianism, Orwell and Margaret Atwood; his overt social criticism, Richard Wright and Kurt Vonnegut.”  — Kirkus

BABYLON: ISSUE THREE by Alan Clark
A hundred years in the future, four deities are reborn in our universe after the death of their own. Now the events that destroyed their home universe have returned once again to kill them. BABYLON is the mind-bending gold-standard of the multi-dimensional doomsday soap opera category, embracing such age-old maxims as “Love is a Dead Place,” “Revenge is for Winners,” and “No Future Forever.” A brutally hilarious sci-fi epic from the expansive imagination of Alan Clark, and illustrated in inimitable, painstakingly detailed style.

Alan Clark is the author of IN SEARCH OF THE BLACK PANTHERS, a graphic novel being published in serial. The second issue is set to release this September.
“Skillyfully rendered and arresting, [Alan Clark’s] illustrations invite reverie and instill a desire to return to look again.”  — Oakland Magazine