Public Access Afterworld

Welcome to Public Access Afterworld, the profound, read-through-the-night, headrush of a novel by an undeniable new voice in contemporary fiction.

How far would you go to bring back the only person who ever felt like home?

Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin's basement to watch TV's analogue-to-digital transition. Beneath the static that follows, Erin catches a glimpse of a mysterious broadcast from a TV network called 'Public Access Afterworld'. Soon after that, she vanishes - changing the trajectory of David's life 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 gradually a pattern emerges in the form of a young streamer, Jules, calling out the same words: Public Access Afterworld.

When Bethany sets out to rescue Jules, she begins an epic journey that sweeps from rural Texas to 1940s Los Alamos - and all the way back to that basement where David and Erin first encountered a world at the edges of reality itself.

Review

A riot in novel form by an author with an utterly singular, original vision. Public Access Afterworld will leave you breathless and desperate for a sequel -- Kaliane Bradley, author of THE MINISTRY OF TIME

Read this. It's a delirious, reality-warping fever dream of a novel, just the way we like them -- Josh Silver, author of FRUIT FLY

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; the kind of epic book that doesn't just warp reality on the page but goes on warping when you look up - you read it and the world glints with secrets anew. -- Torrey Peters, author of STAG DANCE and DETRANSITION, BABY

Public Access Afterworld is an immersive and chilling journey that I stayed up all night binge-reading. Schoenbrun's skill and confidence as a storyteller are made clear by the deft way they play with both genre and form as the book bends and warps across time and mediums. Adroitly beautiful, funny, and scathing, Public Access Afterworld is a book from a talented storyteller with much to say, who's not afraid to say it -- SenLinYu, #1 New York Times bestselling author of ALCHEMISED

In Jane Schoenbrun's electric Public Access Afterworld the American dream is refracted through the lens of the history of television to show its true nightmare self. Thrilling, heart-wrenching, hilarious, visionary, and so damned smart, this novel is a major work from a major talent -- Paul Tremblay, author of A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS and DEAD BUT DREAMING OF ELECTRIC SHEEP

Constantly yanking the magical carpet out from under the reader's feet, this epic quest for the source of all television is psychedelic horror of the first order -- Grady Hendrix, author of WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYWARD GIRLS

An epic TV show wrapped inside a novel wrapped inside our reality and maybe every other reality there ever was, Public Access Afterworld is a 600 page shot of sheer adrenaline, as exhilarating as it is addictive... Jane Schoenbrun is one of modern horror's most distinctive, confident voices and the fact that they're as adept at bringing their vision to the page as they are to the screen is both dazzling and infuriating -- Will Maclean, author of SOLACE HOUSE

A thriller unlike any other. Strange, urgent, utterly hypnotic - once you start reading Public Access Afterworld, you won't stop -- Lev Grossman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE MAGICIANS

About the Author

Jane Schoenbrun is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. Their films include I Saw the TV Glow, We're All Going to the World's Fair, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder. Public Access Afterworld is their first novel.