Popped up on my radar; A couple reader reviews of DEEP DREAM: SCIENCE FICTION EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF ART (Twelve Tomorrows series) for which I wrote the story UNAUTHORIZED (OR, THE LIBERATED COLLECTORS COMMUNE):
— Un blog de ciencia ficción en busca de un nombre
Readers seem to be enjoying it. Though Locus didin't seem to care much for my story apparently.
Ah well, can't win 'em all. I'm just happy to have had a story appear in the same volume with the great Bruce Sterling; a small yet precious feather in my imaginary hat.
-Istanbul first week of July. -Dresden last week of August. -Maybe maybe New York City sometime in the Fall.
In addition to having done Houston earlier this year, this is admittedly more travel than I'd like. I'd rather just hole up in the studio and work without disruption.
Based exclusively on downloads, it looks like THE SOLAR GRID has readers in Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Finland, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, in addition of course to the United States.
The story, I think, is just asking to travel into other languages.
The latest newsletter went out a couple days ago. RESTRICTED FREQUENCY #234: Shortform.
— Occult rituals in the Epstein files.
— “Just hang in there.” – Suzanne Vega for The Creative Independent.
— “An indie horror with internet origins has beaten the legacy franchise “Star Wars” at the box office this weekend.” – NBC news on the unexpected success of BACKROOMS and OBSESSION.
Migraine day today; No productivity for me.
After popular demand, the complete THE SOLAR GRID graphic novel is now available for download. For a limited time only, there are presently two ways to get it:
The book is also being serialized in print from Radix Co-op.
A pathway for a collected print edition is still being explored.
This complete e-book edition comes with a never-before-seen introduction by Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Castlevania, Normal), extensive foreword by Sim Kern (The Free People's Village, Genocide Bad), and fantastic afterword by Ho Che Anderson (King, I Want To Be Your Dog, Godhead).
Hundreds of years after a global flood, night has been consigned to legend. In its place, the Solar Grid—a vast network of artificial suns—keeps Earth bathed in relentless daylight, powering factories that never cease. But this eternal dawn comes at a cost: The Earth has become a scrapheap, a wasteland stripped of resources to fuel colonial settlements on Mars.
Amidst the ruins, two young scavengers, Mehret and Kameen, stumble upon a discovery that could shatter the Solar Grid's fragile, oppressive system. The story spans centuries—from a submerged Cairo to the corporate strongholds of New York, and into the augmented reality of a distant Mars. Environmental collapse, capitalism, imperialism, and migration collide in an epic tale that examines the hopes and consequences of unhinged techno-utopianism.
“Ganzeer treats The Solar Grid as a culmination of his personal, professional and political experiences over recent years.” – THE GUARDIAN
“Ganzeer’s project epitomizes his hyper-democratic ethos.” – FOREIGN POLICY
“It’s a story about the inevitable destruction of our planet by corporate greed and a couple of unassuming antiheroes who somehow bring it all down. This is a story of revolution, the powerless taking power back from the powerful.” – SLATE
Accidentally started a new project somehow.
CAIRO DIARIES | يوميات القاهرة: A series of small mixed media artworks on paper (all around 28 cm x 20 cm | 11” x 7.9” or thereof). The starting point always begins with ripping out a page from an Arabic-language book and blacking out most of the text blackout poetry style, leaving only the words that form a sentence that actually corresponds to my day/week/year. The page then gets rolled into the typewriter, where the translation of the sentence is punched in, and the remainder of the artwork gets built from there.
Pictured above is CAIRO DIARY 001: EXPECTED | توقعت.
Yeah, what I said a few days ago about dedicating the next 6 months to PROJECT HOURGLASS? So not happening; three more projects have already been jammed into the pipeline.
Twelve hours at the writing desk. The body aches and the word machine is depleted. Finished a short story in English, around 3500 words, and immediately started drafting the Arabic version. First time writing fiction in Arabic in a good... 20 years maybe? Which makes me slow and sluggish, but also makes the experience itself exciting. What can I say, I get off on trying new shit.
One of the interesting things emerging from this process is that in drafting the Arabic, I'm not doing a super faithful translation, but rather I find myself making drastic changes along the way. Not just in dialogue or choice of words or sentence structuring, but even in characterization and plot details. Changes that I feel would make for a better story. So much so that once I'm done with the Arabic, I'm likely to go back to the English draft and rewrite it accordingly.
As I begin to build momentum in my approach to PROJECT HOURGLASS, I'm already anticipating the three major disruptions I have in store for me in coming months:
- Kiddo for two weeks.
- Istanbul for a week.
- Dresden for a week.
Other than that, I should be able to dedicate the bulk of the six months that remain to PROJECT HOURGLASS. As far as TSG goes—which has been complete for months now—still no concrete development on that front just yet.
Two scenes and 1400 words later, I now remember how exhausting writing fiction can be. The act of getting into the heads of characters that don't actually exist—really getting into their heads—is no easy feat.
So much so that I felt the urge to take a baking break. I hardly ever want to bake.
Cheesecake. Let's see how it turns out.